


Where They Think They Belong

by LayALioness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-01 05:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 57,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5194199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So Murphy bet me a hundred bucks you wouldn’t date me. Wanna con him and split the cash?”</p><p>Clarke glances up from her textbook to give him an unimpressed look. “What.”</p><p>He shrugs; there’s really no backing out, now. “I figured it was sort of self-explanatory.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, look, this fic is a whammy. it is huge, and so i'm splitting it up because i am the author and i'm playing the god card on this one. it's mostly written, so it should all be posted by the end of the week, but. well. we all know my track record with wip's, and it is just not great, so finger's crossed on this one.
> 
> title from Haus by Oberhofer

Bellamy’s pretty sure that no matter how he words it, he’ll sound like the asshole he definitely is, and the conversation will be torture.

“So Murphy bet me a hundred bucks you wouldn’t date me. Wanna con him and split the cash?”

Clarke glances up from her textbook to give him an unimpressed look. “What.”

He shrugs; there’s really no backing out, now. “I figured it was sort of self-explanatory.”

Clarke squints at him, like she’s not sure this conversation is actually happening. To be fair, neither is he. “Is this a prank? Isn’t this literally the plot to like a dozen rom-com’s?”

“Yeah, it is, and I figured pretty much anyway I did it, I’d come out a dick. But at least this way we each get fifty bucks.”

She finally closes her book, like that’s what convinces her he’s serious. She regards him for a minute and he tries not to squirm. Clarke’s eyes can get intense sometimes, and he’s not used to having all that focus trained on him. “Is this just some weird way to get me to go out with you?”

Bellamy blinks, because–god. Did she really think he’d do that? To be fair, they didn’t really know each other all that well, but still. He liked to think that if he was trying to ask a girl out–for real–he’d at least be normal about it.

“I mean, kind of? That’s literally the whole point. But in a fake way.”

Clarke still looks wary. “I’ve seen _She’s All That_ , Bellamy. I was alive in the nineties. I know how this ends.”

Bellamy snorts. “You were like, four in the nineties.”

Clarke shrugs. “It’s on Netflix.”

Bellamy squints down at her. Honestly, he’d been expecting her to say no, but just because of like, ethics or whatever. Not because she thought he was trying to _con_ her into dating him.

Frankly, he’s a little insulted.

“Look princess,” he says flatly, and Clarke’s eyes go comically wide. Right—he’s never actually called her that out loud before. Back when she was new, and he didn’t know her name, he’d taken to calling her _princess_. In his head, because he’s not a dick, but now he’s gone and given himself away. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually have to trick people just to get a date, alright? You could’ve just said you’re not interested.”

She’d started glaring at him a little in the middle, which he couldn’t really be mad about because, well, he called her _princess_ , seriously. But by the end, she’s looking a little pink. “That’s not—I didn’t mean it like that,” she says, and bites at her lower lip, like it’s habit. “I just. People can be jerks, sometimes, and the last time I was asked out it didn’t go so well.”

Bellamy gives her his most unimpressed look. Clarke Griffin, if a little aloof and separate from the rest of society, is objectively the hottest girl in school. It doesn’t seem to matter much, since for all intents and purposes she’s basically a recluse, but he’s ninety-nine percent sure that if she went up to every single student here and asked them to Homecoming, they’d just ask what color they should wear.

Well, Murphy might be the exception, but Murphy’s pretty much _always_ the exception, so it’s not like that counts for much.

“Okay, well. I’m definitely a jerk, but let’s just assume I’m being totally upfront about this,” he waits for her to nod a little before continuing. “You want in? I’m really hoping you say yes, because otherwise I owe Murphy a hundred bucks.”

It might be a dick move, trying to guilt her a little, but. He really doesn’t just have a hundred bucks to spare on some stupid locker room bet he didn’t want to make in the first place.

As if reading his mind, Clarke smirks. “You shouldn’t have made the bet,” she says primly, and he huffs a laugh, leaning against the locker, metal cold against his skin. She’s got all her books out by now, and is just holding onto the door by default.

“Is that a no?”

“How long do we have to date, to convince him?” she asks, and it doesn’t surprise him at all that her main focus seems to be schematics. “Is there a deadline? How soon should we break up after, so he won’t be suspicious? Also, I think I deserve sixty.”

“Sixty?” He watches her shut the locker and shift the bag on her back before looking at him evenly. She’s a good half a foot shorter than him, but somehow manages to never seem like she’s looking up.

“Sixty,” she says, firm. “Because you made the bet without asking me, first.”

Bellamy shrugs. It’ll still be forty dollars he wouldn’t have otherwise. “Sure, that’s fair. And uh, maybe a week? I dunno, really. I don’t think he thought you’d say yes.”

“I haven’t,” she chirps, and he stares at her until she breaks, smiling slowly. “Okay, yeah, I’m definitely in. I just didn’t want you assuming.”

He grins, but he can’t help feeling a little disappointed, because Clarke always seemed like the kind of person he’d like, if he actually got to know her. She’s in his Ancient History class, but she sits all the way up in the front while he’s somewhere in the middle, so they’ve never actually interacted. But she makes a lot of good points in class, and always gets an A on the essays, so he figures she at least knows what she’s talking about.

And it doesn’t hurt that she’s cute. But he likes to think he’s not shallow enough for that to really matter.

But instead of sitting next to her in class to pass notes shit talking Zeus, getting to know her like a _normal_ person, and then maybe asking her out—their first conversation is him asking her to help him commit fraud. He’s not sure he can even ask her on a real date after the whole thing’s over; it’d feel too much like he really was tricking her.

“Cool,” he says, following her down the hall. “You, uh—want me to carry your bag, or something?”

Clarke glances up at him, amused. “Do people even do that anymore?” she asks, passing her Jansport pack over to him. “I thought high school relationships were all about hooking up under the bleachers, these days.”

Bellamy chokes on a laugh, to cover up the fact that her bag is about ten times as heavy as he was expecting. What does she even _have_ in there— _bricks_? What could she possibly need bricks for? “Nobody hooks up under the bleachers, that’s why there are _cars_. Jesus, were you raised in a barn?”

“Jesus was born in a barn,” she grins, and he hands her bag back when they reach her classroom—AP Physics, which, why _anyone_ would want to take AP Physics is beyond him.

“Yeah, touché.” He fidgets a little, unsure what to do. Should they hug? Should he kiss her cheek? Is that even _allowed_? They should definitely go over boundaries later.

He’s still mildly freaking out, when she squeezes his wrist once, and then steps up on her toes to kiss his jaw. He’s pretty sure she only kisses there because it’s what she can reach, but it’s still warm, and a little bit wet from her lip gloss.

“Bye, Bellamy,” she says, low and smiling, and he actually can’t remember which class he’s supposed to be in, right now.

It’s Home Economics, and he _just_ gets there in time. Miller’s already got his apron on, and their crock pot bubbling.

“Hey, sorry,” he offers, but Miller just shrugs, passing Bellamy the ragged stained apron that nobody likes, and usually ends up with whoever shows up latest.

“Heard you’re dating Clarke Griffin,” Miller says, the same way he says anything; nonchalant and impassive, to make it clear that he really _does not care_.

Bellamy squints over at him. “It literally _just_ happened—how’d you even know?”

He’ll probably feel shitty for lying to his friends about Clarke, later, but he’ll tell them the truth once the bet’s done. Besides, he sort of _is_ dating Clarke—just, in a fake way.

Miller shrugs, equally dismissive, and Bellamy isn’t sure why he’s even surprised. Miller always knows everything. He has all the town gossip stored up in his head, but because he doesn’t actually gossip himself, it just tends to stay there. He’s like a safe vault, for secrets.

They’re making crock pot apple pie, and while Bellamy’s fairly competent in the kitchen, he never really got the hang of pie crusts, and Miller’s cooking expertise fall mostly on the instant ramen side of things, so theirs ends up looking more like mashed up baby food, with bits of pie crust thrown in for texture.

It tastes alright though, so they still eat most of it. When it comes to Home Ec food, they lost a lot of their standards at the start of the semester, when they managed to make an entire red velvet cake with salt instead of sugar, and still swallowed down half.

They have lunch right after, which was a bit of a scheduling mistake on Bellamy’s part, because it usually means he spends most of third period in a food coma.

But when he gets to the cafeteria, _Clarke’s_ there, sitting with Wells as usual, because he’s essentially her only friend. People _like_ Clarke, in the peripheral sense, because she’s a good partner for group work, and she always waves back in the hallways, but no one actually seems to _know_ her, except Wells. Which doesn’t really count, since he just transferred over with her, when she got kicked out of the fancy private school across town.

That might also be a reason why no one actively associates with Clarke, he’s pretty sure. There were a lot of theories about what she did to end up at Ark High, from arson, to starting an underground fight club, to hooking up with a teacher. But none of them really seem to fit.

If Bellamy had to guess, he’d probably say she stole all her favorite books from the library or something, but even that thought seems to fall short. Clarke’s very obviously rich; she could just _buy_ her favorite books. In first edition.

Miller elbows him in the ribs a little, smirking, before heading over to the AV Club table, where Bellamy’s pretty sure they just pass around oatmeal-pot cookies and talk about the twist ending in _Se7en_.

Bellamy usually sits with Raven, at one of the smaller round tables near the back—when she doesn’t just spend her lunch in the shop room. They became best friends through proximity in ninth grade, because of Band class of all things, and then just never really stopped.

But Murphy’s there too, and when Bellamy glances over, he can see him clearly watching, waiting for Bellamy to make his move.

Clarke grins when he slides in beside her, tossing his bag on the floor. Wells jumps a little, because he’d been looking at a Crossword book, one of those paperback ones they sell in grocery stores by the packs of gum.

“Hey. Bellamy, this is Wells. Wells, this is my fake boyfriend Bellamy.”

Bellamy chokes a little as he waves, which she looks smug about. “You _told_ him?”

Clarke just shrugs, nibbling at her sandwich. It looks like peanut butter and jelly, but it’s the fancy kind of bread from Whole Foods, and he’d bet anything that the peanut butter is that expensive natural stuff that has to go in the fridge. “Wells won’t tell anyone. He doesn’t even interact with Murphy.”

Bellamy frowns. He knows Wells even less than he knows Clarke—but he’s apparently the kind of guy who transfers schools just to follow his best friend, and fills out crossword puzzles during lunch time. Basically, he’s the kind of guy Murphy would shove in a locker if he could, except Wells is pretty big. Definitely bigger than Murphy, and Murphy doesn’t really pick fights he knows he can’t win.

“I’m excited to see this play out,” Wells says, and he does genuinely seem excited about it. “It’s going to be a headline story in the school paper.”

“We have a school paper?” Bellamy wouldn’t really be surprised if they did and he just didn’t know about it, but he didn’t think he was _that_ oblivious.

“No,” Clarke says, rolling her eyes. But she sounds fond about it.

“Not yet,” Wells corrects. “I have another meeting with Principle Kane this Friday. I’m going to bring it up again.”

“How many meetings have you had with the guy?” Bellamy suddenly remembers he has an actual _lunch_ in his bag—leftover pizza, the slices with mushrooms because O hates those—and he digs it out.

“Twelve,” Wells chirps, and Bellamy shudders a little. He can’t even imagine being stuck in a limited space with Kane _twelve times_.

“He’s harassing the poor man,” Clarke says, exasperated, like she’s had this exact conversation before, and Bellamy can’t help grinning.

It’s nice, the familiarity of it. It’s how he’s pretty sure most best friends are, except his best friends are Raven and Miller, and most of the time they spend together, they don’t even really talk.

If he’s being completely honest, Octavia’s probably his real best friend, but. That would mean his closest friend is his ten year old sister, and he’s already pathetic enough without _that_.

“People deserve to know what’s going on in their community,” Wells declares, and Bellamy chokes a little on his pizza, laughing.

“I’m pretty sure the only newsworthy thing around here is whether or not they’re selling mozzarella sticks at lunch,” he says, and Wells shrugs.

“First steps are often small ones,” he says sagely, and Clarke coughs the word _pretentious_ under her breath, and then nudges Bellamy in the side a little, to make sure he gets the joke.

It’s—nice. He’s not really used to so much interaction, over lunch. Usually he and Raven just kick each other under the table and play Fuck-Marry-Kill, until it’s time for class.

When the warning bell rings, Clarke grins over at him. “What, you’re not gonna carry my books again?”

“I’m not entirely convinced _books_ are what’s in that bag,” he grumbles, but he takes it anyway. “I thought you didn’t want me tarnishing your reputation as a strong, independent woman.”

Clarke laughs a little, dry. “I think we both know _that’s_ not my reputation.” It’s the first he’s ever heard her refer to all the rumors about her mysterious appearance, and she sounds a little bitter about it.

“Hey,” Bellamy tugs on her arm a bit, until she looks at him. He wets his lips, trying to think of what to say, but—it’s not like he’s ever had to address this kind of issue. Usually when kids shit talk the people he cares about (read: Octavia), he just hits them, and something tells him that with Clarke, that’s probably not the best course of action to take. “People can be jerks,” he grins a little, relieved when she smiles back. “For what it’s worth, I thought you got kicked out for stealing books and giving them to the poor, or something.”

Clarke squints up at him, like she’s trying to figure out if he’s kidding. He’s really, really not. And he feels stupid about it, because she probably doesn’t even remember, probably didn’t even really notice him at all until he cornered her that morning, but he saw her on her first day, with one of the freshman girls, Charlotte, who was crying outside the girl’s locker room.

He found out later, that some of the older girls had been bullying her, sticking tampons in her bag and coat pockets, so they’d fall out whenever she moved. It still pissed him off to think about because seriously—who does that? Haven’t they seen _Carrie_?

But he watched Clarke sit down beside her, talking low enough that he couldn’t hear, rubbing Charlotte’s back like he sometimes does for Octavia, and he’d thought _I could like her._ Which, for someone like him, who actively tried to avoid people, is a pretty big deal.

“I’m not some saint, you know,” she scoffs, and he bites back a grin, because she probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he called her adorable.

Wells seems to have deserted them, probably to give them some privacy, which is nice but unnecessary. Bellamy probably shouldn’t spend a lot of time alone around Clarke. That’s how lines get muddled.

“Okay, James Dean—lay it on me. What’d you do?”

Clarke worries her lip a little, like she’s debating actually telling him. He wouldn’t be mad if she didn’t; it could be a personal thing, and she barely even knows him, but. He hopes she does, all the same.

Finally, she sighs. “I painted _Incontinent Racist_ on a teacher’s office door,” she admits, and Bellamy just stares for a moment before he doubles over, laughing so hard he cries.

“You _what_?” he gasps, wiping at his eyes, and she glares at him. “ _Why_? What did they do?”

“He said HP Lovecraft was just _a product of his times_ ,” she mocks, using air quotes, which for some reason makes it twice as funny. “And that we should just look over his racism, because he did so much for modern literature.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty shitty,” he agrees, and she gives a brisk nod, clearly glad someone agrees. “They suspended you for that?”

“Oh, I was expelled,” Clarke shrugs, like it’s no big deal, getting kicked out of a prep school that costs ten thousand dollars a year. “They were willing to let me back, if I wrote him a sincere apology, but—fuck that. I’d rather just go here.”

“And Jaha just decided to transfer to public school with you?” he asks. He’s pretty sure that’s kind of unusual, even with best friends.

“He hated Cage too,” she says, like it’s obvious. “And everyone was kind of—prejudiced, but in a _high class_ way, you know? Like, they all wanted Wells on their sports teams, or their clubs, but just because he made them look more diverse. They’d compliment his _articulateness_.” She makes a face, and Bellamy winces.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I know.”

“At least here they just think we’re snobs,” she shrugs, and he frowns at her.

“Wait, that’s what you think? No one thinks you’re a snob.”

Clarke gives him an unimpressed look, and he relents a little.

“Okay, maybe Murphy and his asshole friends do, but that’s it. Mostly we just thought you didn’t want to hang out with us.”

“You called me _princess_ ,” Clarke points out, and he blinks a little. Now that he thinks about it, of course that makes sense—that she’d think he was referring to her status, or something. But honestly that hadn’t really crossed his mind.

“Yeah, but that’s just because,” he reaches over and tugs a little on her necklace, the tiny metal crown dangling from a chain. He’d noticed it when he first saw her, because O used to have a similar one, but hers was a bird cage.

“Oh,” Clarke says, and flushes, looking up at him. “Did it ever occur to you all that if you want to hang out with someone, you should try asking?”

Bellamy grins, sliding her bag off his shoulder. Apparently she has Gym this period, which embarrassingly he didn’t even notice. He was just following her down the hall. “Hey, I did ask,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at him before pursing her lips, like she isn’t sure how to word what she’s about to say.

“There’s this, uh—” she frowns, shakes her head a little, and then gives a small smile. “I’ll see you later. We should plan, and stuff. I’m assuming we should go on at least one fake date.”

Bellamy really wants to ask what she was going to say, before she cut herself off, but doesn’t. She probably didn’t finish for a reason. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Should we trade numbers?” she wonders, and honestly he’s really glad she’s on top of the whole fake relationship stuff, because clearly he hasn’t got a clue.

They switch phones and put in their information—Clarke has a sleek rose gold iphone. He isn’t sure what number it is, but it looks brand new. If she’s surprised by his shitty prepaid Nokia from Walmart, she doesn’t say, just types in her number and hands it back to him.

“Cool,” he says, and headed to his accounting class, which he’s only passing because Jasper feels sorry for him, and lets him copy his notes. Bellamy has a very compact set of skills, and math just is not one of them.

Coincidentally, Murphy is also in his accounting class, he’s pretty sure only for Monty, and so is Miller—again, mostly for Monty. Monty’s the kind of person who’s popular because he’s so nice that everyone likes being around him, hoping some of that niceness might spread like a contagion.

Because all four of them are also in the AV Club, and because the class is taught by Mr. Nyko who spends most of his time messing around with Polyvore on his desktop, accounting tends to turn into a round of intense debate over cinema, pretty quickly.

By the time Bellamy shows up, they’ve apparently already started. Today’s argument seems to be over classic science fiction, with _Bladerunner_ and the original _The Day the Earth Stood Still_ duking it out.

“Blake, you’re the tiebreaker,” Murphy declares. He’s firmly Team Bladerunner, because AI’s, and Miller seems to agree—while Jasper and Monty stand their ground with aliens.

“Beats me,” he shrugs. “I’ve never seen either one.” It isn’t even close to true, and he’s definitely a bigger fan of _Bladerunner_ , just for Harrison Ford alone, but he’s learned to choose his battles when it comes to cinephiles.

“Blasphemy,” Jasper gasps, and everyone rolls their eyes. Jasper’s been so over-dramatic for so long that it’s pretty much impossible for him to sound at all natural.

Also, he’s pretty sure they’re all still high from the cookies at lunch.

“Saw you and your girl,” Murphy smirks, and Bellamy eyes him a little, trying to figure out if he’s going to be a dick about it. He’s not sure why he even bothers; Murphy’s basically a dick about everything. “What’d you do to convince her?”

“Maybe we realized we actually like each other and have shit in common,” Bellamy shrugs, and tries hard not to feel offended when the rest of them laugh.

At least Monty pats his shoulder a little. “We’re not laughing at you, Bell,” he promises, as he laughs. “It’s just—you guys are pretty different, you know?”

“Yeah, well, opposites attract and all that,” he grumbles, pulling out the homework he’s positive he didn’t do right. “Jasper, do you have the notes from last time?”

Jasper heaves a sigh too big for his body, and then pulls one of his offensively yellow legal pads from his bag. Bellamy will never understand how someone so prone to ridiculousness can have such impeccable handwriting. It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries.

“I don’t buy it,” Murphy says, chewing on the end of his pencil, even though it’s mechanical and his teeth will fuck it up. “You and the princess.”

Bellamy glares back at him. He definitely isn’t referring to Clarke’s necklace, when he calls her that. “Tough shit. You made the bet, now you have to pay up.”

The thing is, he wouldn’t _actually_ make Murphy pay, if he didn’t have the money. But he _knows_ he has it, and Murphy keeps sneering when he talks about Clarke, and it’s starting to piss Bellamy off.

“No way. What if you just told her, and you plan to split the cash? I pay and the next day you two are miraculously broken up? That’s bullshit.”

Bellamy knows he has a pretty good poker face, because Indra’s bingo group comes over to play every third Thursday of the month, and they started letting him sit in when he was fourteen. But he’s definitely blanching on the inside, because Murphy’s hit the nail right on the fucking head, and it hasn’t even been a whole day, yet.

“Alright, your highness, what’ll convince you?”

Murphy pretends to think it over for a minute even though he very fucking clearly already has an idea. “Winter Formal,” he decides, and Bellamy’s stomach sinks.

The Winter Formal’s right after Christmas Break, in the first week of January. It’s the beginning of October. That’s three whole months, which is longer than a lot of _real_ relationships he’s seen. There’s no way she’ll go for it, not for sixty bucks.

But if he says no now, he’s completely forfeiting the hundred dollars he doesn’t have. “No way, what if we _actually_ break up before then? Homecoming.”

“Homecoming’s next week,” Murphy says, unimpressed. “No way. Winter Formal or nothing. You’re lucky I didn’t say _Prom_.”

This is the moment, where Bellamy should swallow his pride, and admit he can’t win. He should just step back, and call the whole thing off. Clarke was already annoyed when he agreed to the bet in the first place without her consent. There’s no way she’ll be okay with this new development.

“Fuck you, we can totally make it to Prom,” Bellamy snaps, and Murphy shakes his hand on it, and Jasper records the whole thing with his phone before Mr. Nyko actually looks up and confiscates it.

 _She’s going to kill me_ , he decides, going back to Jasper’s notes. But he can’t focus on the numbers at all.

“Are you dating Clarke Griffin?” Raven asks. It doesn’t sound pointed, like her usual questions, just curious. Bellamy glances down at her, where she’s taking apart some ancient dinosaur of a laptop—to do what, he’s not sure. She might just want to take it apart. She does that sometimes.

“Yeah,” he says, and now he’s expecting some sort of mockery, at least, but Raven just nods, flipping her pony tail back over her shoulder.

“Cool, she’s awesome,” she says, and the school-issued copy of _Macbeth_ falls to his lap.

“ _What_?”

Raven glances up, irritatingly casual. “What? She’s cool, I like her. What part of that don’t you understand?”

“How do you know Clarke Griffin?” Bellamy frowns. He thought Raven only knew him and Miller, and that guy Wick that runs the town dump.

There was Finn for a while, before his parents came into money and he transferred over to the prep school, leaving them all in the dust.

Raven shrugs, going back to the circuit board. “I know people,” she says, defensive.

“You know, like, _three_ people.”

“Well now I know four,” she snaps, and he flinches a little, which makes her relent. “Sorry. It’s just—not everyone’s a self-imposed loner, like you. Some of us actually _want_ more friends. We just suck at it.”

“You don’t suck at it.” She scoffs, and he tosses an old shirt at her. “Seriously, you don’t. You managed to befriend _me_ , and I’m the least friendly person ever.”

“You’re so full of shit, Blake,” she says, making a face. “You are the most extroverted introvert I’ve ever met. You’d big brother the universe, if it let you.”

Bellamy frowns. “That’s not—” He’s interrupted by the shrill ring of his phone, which means Octavia sent a text, letting him know Head Start’s over. “We have to go pick up O,” he tells Raven, who looks smug on his floor.

“See?” she says. “You are the _most_ big brother.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, helping her up, and then fetching her cane where she’d dropped it, which probably doesn’t help his case.

Raven managed to get her license renewed after the accident, through a combination of lots of practice in the Food Lion parking lot, and guilt-tripping the DMV employees. She got her car from Wick’s dump, or at least the outside of it, before rebuilding the engine herself with spare bits and pieces, on a Sunday while she was bored.

She comes home with him most afternoons, and spends the night whenever he knows Indra won’t notice. She hasn’t told him much about Nygel, her foster mom, but he knows she’s been bringing more and more stuff to keep at his house—things like an old plywood jewelry box from when she was a kid, and clothes she only wears in the winter, and all her good shoes. His room’s basically become Raven Reyes’s storage locker, which he doesn’t mind, he just wishes he knew _why_.

Octavia’s playing with one of her Tamagachi’s when they show up. She’s been slowly but surely amassing a collection of all different types, which Bellamy wouldn’t really mine, except they all give synchronized chirps in the middle of the night, which he’s pretty sure is a terrible sign of Skynet or something.

She and Raven bicker over the radio for the whole drive home, which is pretty normal for them. They’re both the kind of people that like to show they care by arguing with you over everything.

He’s just got O situated at the table with her homework, when Raven leans up beside him on the counter, grabbing a can of Seven Up from the fridge. “Finn messaged me a couple weeks ago,” she says, and Bellamy frowns.

“What’d he want?” He knows it’s hard for Raven to cut Finn out completely. She’d known him since they were kids. But it’s hard for him to even picture Finn as a child. He imagines him as that kid the teacher left in charge when they went to the bathroom, the one that really did turn in all the students that talked.

“Just to catch up, I guess,” she shrugs, taking a sip. “He doesn’t want to get back together or anything.”

“Good,” Bellamy grumbles, and she pokes him in the ribs.

“That’s how I know Clarke,” she says, and he must look confused, because she elaborates. “She met Finn at that fucking prep school, and he asked her out.”

Bellamy frowns a little. “But you guys were dating until a few months ago.”

“I know,” she says, pointed, and then he gets it.

“Jesus, what a prick.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Anyway, Clarke found out, and looked me up. Told me everything, and then dumped him.”

Bellamy’s mouth goes a little dry, because—what is he supposed to say to that? _Good for her_? _Congratulations for bonding over your shared dickbag ex_ seems like it might fall short.

The thing is, he remembers how Raven was, when her relationship with Finn imploded spectacularly—just two months after her accident. He remembers how angry she was, all the time, with _everyone_ , even him, and she couldn’t even be alone, because she wasn’t able to get around, yet. She had to have help _bathing_ , and so she was pissed about that, too, and Bellamy wanted to punch Finn Collins in the throat.

She’d said Finn wanted to break up earlier, but then she got in the accident, and so he felt too guilty. Not guilty enough to _not cheat on his injured girlfriend_ , but. Guilty enough not to dump her, first.

And knowing that Clarke is the reason Raven finally broke it off—he already liked her, a stupid amount for only having known her half a day—but the fact that she helped his best friend? Yeah, that’s not helping.

“She’ll be good for you, definitely,” she adds, slyly. “She’s a mother hen, too.”

“We’re not really dating,” he blurts, because he can’t keep it in anymore—it’s too much. He’s been debating just calling or texting Clarke, to tell her about Prom—because _fuck_ , he hasn’t even told her yet—but he only has thirteen minutes left for the month, and texts cost fifty cents each.

And he’d really rather tell her face-to-face, anyway. He does better in person. Plus she might want to hit him, and he doesn’t want her to miss out on that.

“What?” Raven’s glaring, now, because she _hates_ getting caught off guard.

“We’re, uh,” he clears his throat a little, because _god_ this sounds pathetic. “We’re not dating, really. It’s for a bet. Murphy bet me a hundred bucks I couldn’t get her to date me, so I told her, and we’re gonna split the winnings.”

Raven stares at him for a long moment, which is how he knows she’s really pissed. When Raven explodes, she’s just irritated, and needs to yell at something for a while. When she’s _angry_ , she gets still and quiet, as she mentally calculates your death.

“This is the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever done,” she says. “And you’ve done some _stupid_ fucking things. You set your house on fire, once.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “I was _twelve_ —and it was the garbage can! I didn’t know it would melt!”

Octavia bounces in to get a pudding cup from the pantry, eyeing them a little as she does. “What are you guys fighting about?”

Raven’s clearly biting at the inside of her cheek, because she knows better than to fight in front of O, but it’s taking a lot of effort on her part. Bellamy just sighs.

“Dumb grown up stuff,” he says, and O rolls her eyes, ripping the pudding open with her teeth.

“I’m not a _baby_ , Bell,” she sniffs, and marches out as indignantly as her tiny body will allow.

When Octavia’s out of hearing range, Raven snaps back to him. “Are you into her?” she demands, and he fidgets a little, which is more telling than if he’d said yes. He doesn’t really _want_ to be into Clarke—it’s not real, and he knows that, and he probably doesn’t have a shot with her, anyway. But he can’t really help it. Raven sighs, running a hand through her hair because she forgot it was tied back. Her fingers get caught in the elastic band, so she just takes it out angrily.

“You’re gonna get your fucking heart broken,” she snaps, “And it won’t even be her fault, so I can’t even hate her for it.”

Bellamy grins down at the floor a little. She doesn’t _hate_ him, at least, and she can’t be _too_ mad with him, if she still wants to protect his honor. “So you’ll still watch the kid for me?”

Raven usually babysits Octavia while he works and Indra’s off doing whatever it is elderly retired people who weren’t expecting to get stuck with two dependents, do. Raven huffs a little, and nods.

“Obviously,” she scoffs. “So does this mean you’re joining Clarke’s weird poetry club?”

“What weird poetry club?”

Raven shrugs, and chucks the can into the trash can, with a perfect arc. She could have played basketball, if it weren’t for—well, she just could’ve. “Beats me. She asked if I wanted to join, but you know words aren’t my thing. I figured you might be interested. You write those weird sonnets.”

Bellamy flushes, a little indignant. She’d found out about his Homeric poems by accident, in tenth grade, and she _refuses_ to let it go.

“It’s basically nerd fanfiction,” she’d said, which was just—no. He’d refused to speak to her for a week.

“It sounds like your kinda thing,” she shrugs, and then limps out of the room, probably to go watch something inappropriate with O. She showed her the first _Scream_ movie last week while he was working, and Octavia was hiding in the closet when he came home.

In the end, he doesn’t have to text or call Clarke—she calls him. He’s washing the dishes, after making the canned green bean casserole in one of those disposable tin foil pans, because Indra’s are all flaked with lead from the fifties.

Only a handful of people have his phone number, so he thinks it might be his boss, or Raven having forgotten a textbook or something, but when he looks down it’s Clarke’s name blinking up at him, with one of those cat-face emoticons that she must have typed in by hand.

He wipes the dish soap off on the thigh of his jeans, and only hesitates a little before answering. “Uh, hi.”

“Hey,” Clarke chirps, sounding impossibly perky. “Bellamy?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just—” she huffs a little laugh. “Did you maybe want to hang out? Tonight?”

Every thought promptly falls out of Bellamy’s brain. “Uh…”

“It’s fine if you don’t,” she says hurriedly, backtracking, which is frankly the opposite of what he wants. He wants to encourage her to hang out with him all the time.

“I do, I just—where?”

“Oh, um, my house. My mom’s not home, so.”

“What about your dad?” He knows, objectively, that they won’t be doing anything _wrong_. He’ll probably have to take Octavia, so he wouldn’t really be comfortable with that. But he’s still pretty sure her parents might not want him to be alone with their daughter at seven o’clock at night.

“He’s not, either,” Clarke chirps, but it sounds a little forced this time. Bellamy lets it go.

“I’m babysitting my little sister,” he says, because she’s bound to find out eventually, and anyway it’ll be good to know sooner rather than later, if she’s going to be weird about O. People his age generally are, because they don’t think he should be so close to his sister, and he tries to stay away from them when he can. “Can she come?”

“Yeah, of course. How old is she? Should I pick up diapers or something? I don’t think I have any old toys…”

He has to laugh at that, because—of course her first reaction is _what can I do to help?_ Honestly, he’s not sure why he was worried. “She’s ten, so. As long as you have some weird obscure horror movies, she’ll be fine.”

There’s a grin in Clarke’s voice now. “I’ll see what I can do. Do you need a ride over?”

“That depends. Where do you live?”

“Phoenix Park?” Phoenix Park is the gated community, a good twenty minute walk from his block.

He pictures Clarke showing up in her family Benz, or Ferrari, idling outside his shitty, sunk-in house. Twenty minutes is doable.

“We can walk there. Let me just finish the dishes, and then we’ll go.”

“You really don’t have to,” she says. “If you’re too busy, I understand—”

“Clarke,” he cuts her off before she can talk herself out of it. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Octavia takes very little convincing. She’s not really used to going anywhere, because Bellamy almost never goes out, so she just shoves _three_ —which, why does she need _three_? What is she going to do with them all?—Tamagachi’s in the pocket of her sweater, and skips out the door.

He does have to carry her on his back for the last two blocks, though, when she starts lagging behind.

“So who are we visiting?”

“My friend from school. Clarke.”

“Is it a he or a she?” He can feel Octavia wiggling, so he’s pretty sure she’s trying to feed one of her tiny digital pets while he walks.

“Clarke’s a girl.”

“So your girl-friend, Clarke,” she specifies, giggling near the end. Bellamy sighs and hitches her up on his shoulders.

“Yeah.”

Clarke texts him the address, and they manage to find her house relatively easily. It’s maybe not as enormous as he was picturing in his head, but it’s still the biggest house he’s ever been in—the kind with gingerbread cut-out trim, and a wrap-around porch with white railings. He’s fairly sure Clarke’s an only child. He doesn’t feel _bitter_ about it, not really, not like he would have a few years ago, before his mom died and they moved to Ark, but—it just feels a little strange. Why would three people need so much space?

It’s the feeling he used to get, whenever he went to Golden Corral and saw plates piled high with every type of food imaginable—who could possibly eat so much? They used to dig through the public library dumpsters, for the newspapers, so they could get all the coupons for groceries. Buffet dinners still make him feel a little sick.

There’s an enormous brass knocker, shaped like two arms connecting to hold a heart at the bottom, but he doesn’t use it, instead ringing the bell.

Clarke opens the door wearing a pair of paint-stained jeans and an old Camp Woebegone t-shirt, with bare feet. Her toes are painted a shiny pink, and he has to actively try not to stare at them. She’s just so—small. Small, and cute, and beaming up at him and Octavia, like she actually thought they might not come and she’s relieved.

“Hi,” she says, bright and happy, and he _knows_ his grin looks fucking ridiculous, but he can’t help it.

He has a crush on Clarke Griffin. It fucking sucks.

“Hey,” he says, and Octavia bulldozes her way in front of him.

“I’m Octavia,” she says, all business, and Clarke smiles helplessly down at her. “I’m Bell’s sister. Oceana just died.”

Clarke glances up at him, unsure. “What?”

“One of her computer pets,” he explains, rolling his eyes, and O thrusts the Tamagachi in Clarke’s face, to show her.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says seriously, and Bellamy chokes on a laugh.

She leads them down to the massive living room, with the biggest leather couch he’s ever seen—it curves around on both ends, and could easily fit two people side-by-side, it’s so wide. He sits down a little gingerly and instantly gets swallowed up. He might just never leave.

“So, we don’t have a TV,” Clarke starts, and laughs at Octavia’s expression of horror. “But we do have a projector, and a huge white wall, so.” She gets the film— _Jaws 2_ , which is better than he expected, honestly—cued up and all the lights turned off, before Bellamy finally gets up his nerve.

“Hey, uh—we have to talk,” he whispers, so O won’t hear, and Clarke turns, looking stricken.

“Okay,” she says, just as quietly, and pads out into the kitchen, while he trails behind.

Even the kitchen feels big enough to swallow him whole, made up of glass and stainless steel and lots of shiny surfaces that reflect his warped face back at him. There’s a wrack filled with nearly four dozen wine glasses, and he _knows_ they can’t all possibly get used, but there’s still not a speck of dust on them.

“What’s wrong?” She’s worrying her lip again, arms curled around herself, and he has to mentally beat down the urge to hug her until she laughs.

But it’s probably best to just—tell her, right? That way if she never wants to speak to him again, he’s not _too_ attached yet.

“Murphy changed the bet,” he sighs, and she straightens a little, unimpressed.

“That’s it? What changed?”

“The, uh. The deadline.” He winces a little, preparing himself. “He won’t believe it, unless we last till Prom.”

Clarke stares at him, mouth open, probably without realizing. “ _Prom_?” she echoes, in disbelief, which—at least that’s better than outrage.

“Prom,” he confirms darkly. “Look, I get it, if you can’t. It’s totally cool, and reasonable, or whatever. I’ll tell Murphy we broke up tonight.”

She still looks unsure, though, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “You’re sure?” she hedges. “It’s just—I’m sorry, Bellamy, but _Prom_! It’s like a whole year away!”

“I know,” he agrees, and he does. He’d hoped she’d decide to stick with it, but. It’s not like he was expecting her to.

“But—we can still be friends, right?”

She’s still wide-eyed, clearly worried he’s going to just walk out and never speak to her again, like _he’s_ the one who should be upset in this situation, which.

Honestly, he’s not even sure why she wants to keep him around. But he’s not about to ruin it.

“Yeah,” he grins. “We can definitely be friends. I don’t wanna miss out on your weird rich-people TV.”

“Shut up,” she laughs, shoving him a little on her way back through the door. “My mom’s a neurologist. She says TV and video games stunt brain development.”

Bellamy snorts a little, and she grins. “But movies are okay?”

“Nah. That was my dad’s.”

He doesn’t miss the past tense, and he doesn’t mention it, either. Just reaches down and squeezes her wrist a little, like she did that morning. It feels tiny in his hand.

“You guys already missed the first bloodbath,” Octavia accuses as they fold back into the couch.

“Oh, no,” Bellamy says, in mock despair. “How will we ever know what happened?”

Clarke hits him with a fancy throw pillow, to make him shut up.

Her mom still isn’t home when the movie’s over, and Octavia’s nodding off against Bellamy’s shoulder.

“We should probably go,” he says, quiet so O doesn’t hear and demand another film, or something.

Clarke blinks awake and goes to speak, but gets cut off by her own yawn, which she looks a little offended about. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Okay.” Then she glances over to the window, sky long since dark, and frowns. “I should drive you back,” she decides, stretching as she stands, so her back pops.

“You don’t have to,” he starts, scooping Octavia up. She instinctively wraps around him like a starfish.

“Bellamy, there is no way I’m letting you carry your sister home in the dark for twenty minutes,” she says hotly, leaving no room for argument.

He ducks so she won’t see his grin, and yeah, it sucks a little that they’re not “dating” anymore, but he’s glad he at least gets to have this.

And maybe, eventually, once the whole bet thing blows over, he can ask her out for real.

He follows her to the indoor garage, and there isn’t a Benz or a Ferrari, but there is a sleek BMW, so he wasn’t _that_ far off.

He buckles O up in the backseat, and she doesn’t even blink, she’s so out of it. It’s Thursday, which means her class had a Field Day for the afternoon, so she probably ate her weight in pixie sticks and then grappled on the monkey bars for two hours. He’ll have to force her to brush her teeth when they get home.

The drive back is quiet, with him periodically telling her where to turn, but nothing else, not even the radio. He watches her drive—hands at exactly nine-and-three, clenched until her knuckles are white—and she waits at least one full minute before making any left turn into oncoming traffic, which is cute, but a little overboard.

She sidles right up to the curb outside his house, and to his own mortification, he’s _blushing_. In the end, it doesn’t even matter that he walked there; she still has to see his shitty block.

But Clarke doesn’t seem to notice, or at least she doesn’t care. She hops up on the porch to open the screen door for him, with his arms full of his sister, head lolling ridiculously against his arm.

“Thanks,” he whispers, and she gives a little smile before jogging back out to the car, getting in from the cold. He’s pretty sure she waves before he shuts the door after him, but it’s dark and hard to tell. He watches her tail lights disappear down the street.

“I like your girlfriend, Bell,” O says, quiet, and he looks down to find her wide-awake and watching him. He frowns, dropping her down on their lumpy floral sofa.

“How long were you awake?” he asks, and then shakes his head in disgust when she grins wickedly. “You just wanted me to carry you,” he accuses.

“I was giving you _private time_ ,” she sniffs primly, and then marches up the stairs to go to bed.

“Brush your teeth!” he shouts after her, and he hears a general noise he takes to be assent. He really hopes she actually does it—lately she’s just been rinsing her toothbrush in the sink, so the bristles are wet and it _looks_ like she’s brushed. He has no idea what her aversion to tooth brushing is, but he thinks it has to do with the toothpaste.

The worst part is, he likes his girlfriend too. But it’s not real.

Raven picks them up the next morning for school. O’s barely in the car, before she bursts.

“Do you know Bell’s girlfriend Clarke?” she asks, and Raven smirks at him in the mirror.

“I sure do,” she sing-song’s, and Bellamy waits until they’re at a red light, to pinch her in the arm. She flicks him in the ear. “She’s awesome,” she crows, and Octavia reaches her little fist up between them so Raven can bump it, the traitor.

Bellamy narrows his eyes at both of them. “Whatever this is,” he waggles a finger in between them, “It’s not happening.”

The girls just smirk.

Raven waits until O’s marching up the drive to Ark Elementary, before she turns the radio dial to The Ramones, and then looks at Bellamy with a raised brow. “You introduced her to Octavia?”

Bellamy shrugs. “She wanted to hang out. It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway—we fake broke up. We’re just friends, now.”

Raven rolls her eyes, heading out towards the high school. “You were always _just friends_ ,” she reminds him. “Now you’re just friends with a weird-ass fake dating history.”

“It’ll make a great story at parties.”

“What parties?” she snorts. “Since when do you go to parties?”

“I might go to parties in the future, where I might tell that story, and some people might laugh,” Bellamy sniffs, but it doesn’t really sound that convincing. Raven’s right; he doesn’t go to parties. He’d rather eat dirt.

Raven parks in her sanctioned Handicapped spot—which took her _months_ to finally break down and use, in a moment of desperation when she was running late to class.

She turns the key and the car shudders violently, like it always does. Bellamy thinks it should be looked at—or better yet, trashed, since it came out of a garbage dump in the first place—but Raven’s assured him half a dozen times that it’s fine.

He holds the door open for her, watching the ground so her cane doesn’t catch on the lip of the door frame, and so he almost doesn’t notice Wells sitting on the bench outside Kane’s office, holding a rag filled with ice to his bloody nose.

“Jaha?” he asks, because up until yesterday he hadn’t been on a first-name basis with the kid, and surnames are sort of his default. “What happened?”

Wells grins a little wryly, eyes flicking over to Raven before sliding back. “Bellamy, hey. You know—same old, same old. Went to PE. Got a locker slammed in my face.”

“Holy shit,” he breathes, right as Kane’s door opens, and Murphy comes oozing out. Bellamy’s immediate thought is _oh, that makes sense_ , and then Wells takes Murphy’s place in the office, door shutting behind them.

Murphy sneers over at Bellamy—and Raven too, probably, except Raven and Murphy don’t sneer and snipe like Bellamy and Murphy do. Raven and Murphy fight with knives.

“How’s the princess?” he asks, smug as ever, and Bellamy _really, really_ wishes he wasn’t about to prove him right.

“Why don’t you ask her, yourself?” Raven asks, and Bellamy turns to see Clarke stomping down the hall like she’s heading into battle.

She’s wearing little tiny sneakers the same pink as her toenails, and a jean skirt that makes her legs look _ridiculous_ , but Bellamy doesn’t even have time to admire them, because suddenly she’s ramming into Murphy, slamming both palms against his chest.

He’s clearly caught off guard, and stumbles back into the wall, hitting it with a grimace. “What the hell—”

“Don’t _what the hell_ me, you _bastard_ ,” Clarke hisses, and Bellamy should probably not be turned on by how angry she is. But he’s long-since accepted that this is who he is, now. “You—you—spineless, little _lizard of a boy_!”

“Whoa, princess,” Bellamy reaches out to lay a hand, soft on her shoulder, and he’s really expecting her to turn around and wail on him too, but instead she just leans into the touch.

“He _hit Wells_ ,” she tells him, outraged, and Bellamy opens his mouth to try to calm her down, because while he’s all about her kicking Murphy’s ass, she probably shouldn’t do it right outside the principal’s office.

And then Murphy opens his fucking mouth.

“Yeah,” he snaps, “I did—what’re you gonna do about it?”

Bellamy and Raven wince simultaneously, as Clarke kicks her leg out, and _stomps_ on his crotch. Well, Bellamy winces. Raven cheers, waving her cane in the air a little.

Bellamy’s still staring at Murphy, doubled over nearly on the floor, when Clarke turns around and loops her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth.

It only takes him a mind-numbing moment to realize that she’s kissing him, and that he should probably— _definitely_ —kiss her back. So he slides his hands around her back, and lets her lick into her mouth until she hums a little, and pulls away, cheeks as pink as her shoes.

“Go to Prom with me?” she asks, and for one amazing moment, he thinks she really means it.

But then he sees her glancing over, making sure that Murphy sees, and it all clicks into place.

“Hell yeah,” he grins. Raven gives a low whistle beside them, and now it’s his turn to flush.

 _It wasn’t real_ , he reminds himself, but it’s no use. His lips taste like her peppermint chapstick, and it might be pathetic, but that fake kiss was the best of his entire life. He’s not sure what that says about him, and he’s not sure that he wants to.

Clarke leans into his shoulder a little, speaking low. “Walk me to class?”

He nods, and lets her tug him along until they turn the nearest corner, and then she presses her back against the wall, tipping her head back with a sigh, staring straight up at the corkboard ceiling.

“So I guess the bet’s back on,” she says, and he mirrors her pose, counting the blurred dots of dead flies trapped in the fluorescent lights above them.

“Guess so,” he agrees, glancing down at her. She gives him a smile that’s only a little nervous around the edges, and squeezes the hand that’s still wrapped around hers.

“I hope you’ve got a Tux.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We should probably talk about the line, or whatever,” he blurts, because the thought’s been on the tip of his tongue since her hand on his knee at lunchtime.
> 
> Clarke glances over at him, bemused. “What line?”
> 
> “The line in the sand,” he mimes drawing one across the dashboard. “Like, boundaries, or whatever. For the bet.”
> 
> She nods, a little awkward, and clears her throat. “That’s a good idea. Okay, where’s your line?”
> 
> “Maybe no kissing,” he decides, and she looks over at him guiltily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. i make no promises that the next chapter will be up as quickly as this one was, but you never know.
> 
> two of the first scenes i ever thought of for this fic are the tetanus scene, and the hickey game. i did forensics in school, and on our bus rides home, some of the kids always played the hickey games, while i and the rest of the golden-heart children played go fish or whatever in the back. so, you know, i didn't just make that game up for angst or anything.

CAD is the only class Bellamy shares with Raven, and it’s his first class of the day, which he has never been so grateful for in his entire life. He only even signed up for the course because Raven told him to, and then promised she’d make sure he passed.

It really shouldn’t be that hard, seeing as he actually works for a construction crew—but CAD is all digital, complicated computer stuff and lots of numerical equations, which he just does not understand on a very fundamental level.

“I just don’t get why they traded wood shop in for this,” he grumbles, trying to make his roof line up with the walls of his virtual house. It’s way too steep—if a virtual roofer had to tile it, they’d fall right off.

Raven swats his hand away from the mouse, which is fair since he’d been basically just aimlessly clicking stuff, hoping it might help. She types a few keys and suddenly the roof is evened out, and perfectly aligned.

“I hate you,” he says, even though he means the opposite. She rolls her eyes, and wheels back over to her own computer.

She’s been impressively quiet about the whole Clarke thing, which he’s thankful for, even if every time he glances over, she’s smirking at the side of his head like she’s won something—which doesn’t even make sense, as she’s not in on the bet.

Maybe she made her own bet, about him and Clarke getting fake back together, or making out in the hall, or something. He knows that back in ninth grade, she had the whole Marching Band in on a betting pool—stupid stuff, mostly. Which brasser would accidentally spill spit all over their shoes, which member of the orchestra would be the most condescending, who would inevitably misstep during the pep rally, and get the whole march off beat. It fizzled out pretty quickly—Raven started taking more AP’s so she was too busy, and Bellamy had only ever let her keep her notebooks at his house; he was pretty inept when it came to actually calculating the wins and losses, and eventually people just lost interest.

But he’s pretty sure he’d know, by now, if she started up another underground betting ring. He knows a lot more people, for one, and she practically lives with him.

The only secret Raven’s been able to keep from him is Nygel, and whatever’s going on in that house.

He’ll let her keep that one, until she’s ready to tell.

He’s trying to flip his front door—it just keeps rotating, so it’s sticking half in and out of his wall, like an architectural Frankenstein’s Monster—when the door opens, and Wells walks in.

He’s wearing a different shirt, one of the generic ones the gym teacher keeps for kids who forget clothes to change into, and the skin around his eyes is a little darker than usual, but otherwise he seems fine.

He gives a sheet of paper to the teacher—Mr. Woods, but he makes everyone call him Gus. He used to be the wood shop teacher, and is still very clearly bitter about the change in curriculum—and then goes over to take the empty seat beside Bellamy.

“Hey,” he says, smiling a little, and Bellamy nods back at him, a bit confused.

“How’s the nose?”

“Breathing through it sucks,” Wells admits, and Bellamy huffs a laugh. “But it’s not broken.”

“Cool.” And then, because he can only do small talk for so long before he physically breaks, “So what’re you doing here?”

Wells shrugs good-naturedly. “They switched my schedule around, so I wouldn’t have any classes with John.”

It takes Bellamy a moment to realize that John is actually Murphy, and he frowns a little. “You didn’t call him that, right? Is that why he hit you?”

Wells shakes his head. “It was actually an accident,” he says, clearly exasperated with the whole thing. “He opened his locker right as I turned the corner. There’s no way he could’ve seen me coming. He’s the one that got the nurse.”

Bellamy’s frown deepens, and he doesn’t realize Raven’s even listening, until she interrupts.

“Wait, _Murphy_ was being helpful?” she demands, fiddling with the lever on her chair so she can bounce up and down in it. “Murphy, Ark High’s biggest little shit, was _being helpful_?”

“He did hit the guy in the face with his locker, Reyes,” Bellamy argues, but he’s not sure if fetching the nurse negates that or not. Murphy may not be inherently evil—he wouldn’t necessarily set anyone on fire, but he probably wouldn’t put them out either, if it took any effort on his part.

Wells just shrugs, strangely at peace with it all. Bellamy’s not totally convinced it isn’t an act. There’s no way he’d just be zen with a guy slamming a locker in his face, no matter how accidental. Especially if he _gloated_ afterwards—that shit’s not called for.

“So, how do I work this?” Wells asks a little sheepishly. His computer isn’t even turned on, so Bellamy leans forward and hits the button.

“Beats me,” he says, as they watch the machine boot up. “I just hit random buttons until Raven takes pity on me, and fixes whatever I did.”

“Blake is comically incompetent when it comes to technology,” Raven agrees, without looking up.

Bellamy shrugs. “I help you with your essay questions, fair’s fair. I know my strengths. You can keep numbers. I’ve got words.”

“So how long have you guys known each other?” Wells asks, and it sounds like he might be asking a different question underneath it, which.

Bellamy gets it; Wells is Clarke’s best friend, of course he’s protective of her. And Bellamy knows how he and Raven look to other people. It took two years and a lot of almost-fist-fights to convince everyone at school they weren’t a Thing. The fact that she pretty much lives with him probably doesn’t help, and people actually started fucking _whispering_ about her in the hallways, like she had some scarlet letter branded on her shirt. She ignored them—or told them to piss off, but. It still felt like it was Bellamy’s fault, somehow. And to make matters worse, his reputation got _better_. Guys he didn’t even know were high fiving him in the hallways, or joking with him in class, and he wasn’t really put out by it, but he didn’t actually know _why_ until one of the jokes was about Raven.

Obviously, Bellamy put a stop to them after that, but he knows people probably still talk about them, even though they’ve denied the rumors a hundred times. And honestly, fuck people who don’t believe them. It’s not like it actually _matters_.

Except, it might, if he’s supposed to be dating Clarke. He should probably talk to her about it, especially since she went through Finngate. He needs to know what she’s comfortable with, what her boundaries are.

He’s not sure if _he_ has any boundaries, yet. No more kissing seems like a good start. It’s too messy—if she kisses him again, he’s not sure he’ll be able to _stop_ that time.

“Freshman year,” Raven says. She’s wheeled herself over and squeezed in between them, so she can show off on Wells’s computer, too. “We terrorized the band teacher.”

Bellamy grins. “To this day, we are not allowed back in that room.” He bumps Raven’s fist when she offers.

“Good riddance,” she sniffs. “They didn’t deserve my drum skills, anyway.”

“And I was a master at the triangle,” Bellamy adds. “Ask anyone. Okay, maybe not anyone. Ask a very specific group of people. I can give you their names.”

“God, you were such a nightmare with that thing,” Raven grouses, putting the finishing touches Wells’s newborn virtual Craftsman. He looks a little overwhelmed, so she pats his shoulder stiffly, and Bellamy bites back a grin. Raven’s the actual _worst_ at comfort. “It gets easier,” she tells him.

“Really?”

Bellamy and Raven answer at the same time, like the assholes they really, really are.

“No.”

He doesn’t hesitate, before sitting with Wells and Clarke at lunch. But he does notice Raven limp in after a while, and start looking around for him, not sure where he is.

Clarke must follow his line of sight, because she says “You can always just ask her to sit with us, too,” like it’s obvious.

Bellamy frowns a little. The table is small, and she and Wells had clearly chosen it for a while. He’d assumed they liked to eat by themselves. “You won’t mind?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, exasperated. “Show of hands, who doesn’t want Bellamy’s hot friend to eat with us?” she asks drily. Predictably, no hands are raised, since there’s only the three of them. Wells does clear his throat a little though, embarrassed.

“You could’ve just said,” Bellamy grumbles, waving an arm so Raven will see.

Clarke pats his knee, and he tenses up a little—it’s embarrassing, really, that she has this effect on him. He shouldn’t be this easy. They definitely need to have that boundaries talk. “I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”

Raven sits beside Wells a little warily, like she’s not sure what the catch is. Bellamy passes her the tray of mozzarella sticks he managed to swipe before they were all sold out. “This is the sort of thing that should be in your newspaper,” he says, nodding to Wells. “ _Fresh Hot Mozzarella Sticks, Only Twenty Sold At A Time: Mislabeled Boxes, Or Lunch Lady Conspiracy?_ ”

“You have a newspaper?” Raven asks, begrudgingly impressed. Wells goes pink around the ears.

“It’s a process.”

“And your follow-up article,” Clarke chirps, gesturing pointedly with one of the sticks before biting the tip off, “ _Lunch Servers Reject Stereotypical Gender Norms, Ask To Be Referred To As Lunch People_.”

“That just makes it sound like they really like lunch,” Raven points out, and Clarke shrugs.

“Of course they like lunch. It’s their profession.”

The conversation keeps on like that—ridiculous in every way—and Bellamy isn’t sure why he was worried Raven might not fit in at the table.

Hell, _he_ didn’t think he’d fit in at the table, but here they are, laughing over a plate of half-finished mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce that’s too cold to eat.

He thinks that might just be the kind of people Clarke and Wells are—the kind that take in anyone who needs it. Like those people who adopt all the puppies being sold in a Walmart parking lot.

And in this case, he and Raven are a couple of strangely awkward and bitter puppies, probably covered in fleas.

Lunch is almost over, when Wells and Raven decide to head to their next class early. It’s some sort of Chem Lab, or something else that involves an equal amount of explosions, he knows because Raven and Wells start debating over the ethics of using Acetone Peroxide to bleach flour. They’re still bickering as they walk down the hall.

“They’re so not subtle,” Clarke says, wry, as she watches them leave, and yeah, Bellamy got the sense that the whole flour thing was a little forced, and they were just trying to give him and Clarke privacy.

She turns to him with a slow smile. “What are you doing after school?”

“Uh, I have work at four.” He could probably take a sick day, since he’s never done it before, but. He’s not sure he wants to start that kind of pattern—calling into work every time Clarke wants to hang out.

“I have this thing at three,” Clarke starts, voice impressively light, even though she’s clearly nervous, because she’s studying her nails. He’s not sure why people study their nails when they’re anxious. Are they worried they’ll fall off, if they’re not looking?

“Does it have to do with the weird poetry club Raven said you run?” he asks, and Clarke makes a face.

“ _Weird poetry club_? It’s Forensics!”

Bellamy frowns, a little confused. Raven often zones out in the middle of a conversation, but she’s not usually _this_ far off. “Like CSI?”

“No—” Clarke cuts herself off, laughing. “No, not at all. It’s, um, competitive storytelling. But you can do lots of other things, too—poetry, prose, speech and debate, current events, even small skits.”

Bellamy must take too long to respond, because she starts babbling again.

“You don’t have to come or anything, it’s just, Raven said you might be interested, and that you actually have some prose of your own, so. You know. We need more members.”

He can’t really help the grin—she’s _nervous_ , and asking him to join her club, with his weird nerdy fanfiction. “How many members do you have?”

“Four. Five, if you count me, but actually probably just four, since Wells is mostly there just for moral support.”

“How did you get the school to sign off on a club that only has five people?” he wonders, genuinely curious. He’d thought there had to be at least ten—when he was a sophomore, he knows Monty and Jasper tried to get Film Club going, but only Miller and Murphy signed up with them, so they got shut down.

“Um, we didn’t,” Clarke admits, going a little pink. “But I’m going to! I just have to do some marketing first, I guess.”

“If only there was a school paper, where you could put in an ad,” he muses, and she shoves him in the arm.

They have Ancient History first, and he’s a little pleased when she sits beside him, instead of in her usual seat up front. She grins over at him before class starts, but she’s clearly not the type to pass notes or gossip during the actual lecture, because she immediately takes out a notebook and pen.

It takes him an embarrassingly long series of subtle glances, to realize that she’s not taking notes, but _drawing_. And pretty well, from what he can see. He’s pretty sure it’s Medea, who they’re reading about—because the class might be called _Ancient History_ , but it should really just be called _Greek-Egyptian-Norse History_.

“That’s really cool,” he says, when they’re packing up to leave, and is instantly gratified when she flushes all the way down her chest. Maybe further, he isn’t sure. He probably shouldn’t think about it.

“Thanks,” she shrugs, clearly trying to be nonchalant about it, which makes him grin. She is so bad at _not_ caring.

“So does your weird poetry club have a weird art section?”

She laughs, and headbutts his arm a little, like a cat. “Shut _up,_ no. That’s next on my to-do list, though.”

“How long is your to-do list?”

“You’ll see,” she chirps, and he trails along after.

The Forensics Club meets in the spare Algebra room, which is objectively speaking the shittiest room in the school. It’s not even a real classroom, it’s a _spare_ classroom, because their school accidentally hired an extra Algebra teacher and had nowhere to put him.

“Watch out,” he teases, sliding into one of the desk seats. “I don’t think you picked the _worst_ place to do this—there might be a janitor’s closet somewhere, filled with mold.”

“Mr. Sinclair said we could use his room any time,” Clarke shoots back, and starts writing a To Do List in turquoise marker on the dry erase board.

_To Do:_

_Gain membership_

_Get officially recognized by school_

_Competitions_

_TEAM NAME_

She caps the marker, studying her list, and Bellamy whistles a little.

“Good to know you’ve got a handle on your priorities.” Clarke throws the marker at his head.

Eventually the other four members show up—a couple of sophomore girls, Harper and Fox, and a freshman, Sterling, who’s brought his friend Monroe. Wells doesn’t show, and Bellamy hasn’t seen him since lunch, so he’s not sure if he should be worried.

“Okay, guys,” Clarke says, looking serious at the front of the room. She sounds like some top-notch lawyer talking to the old white guys who make up her board. “Have you all decided which category you want to do?”

They all have, of course—Fox and Harper want to do Dual Improvisation, Sterling wants to read some Emily Dickenson poem, and Monroe has a book she wants to read out. It all sounds a lot more intricate, when Clarke describes it, and Bellamy feels a little awkward, since he doesn’t even know the categories at all.

She tacks on a nice message at the end, about how the right rhetoric can change the world—and to tell all their friends that they meet Mondays and Fridays in the spare Algebra room at three.

Clarke slides into the seat beside him—they’re the kind with the desk-space attached to the metal chair—and sets a stack of stapled papers on his book.

He felt kind of rude, taking out his Lit reading while Clarke was still going over the tournament rules, but—it’s not like he actually knew what she was talking about, and he has to read six chapters by Monday.

“I figured, you might want to be informed,” she shrugs, and he looks down to see the papers are all about the history and current rules for the American Forensic Association.

“Yeah,” he glances up to find her looking pointedly down at her own notebook—he’s pretty sure she said she’s doing something called Poetry Interpretation, which he’s embarrassingly into. “Thanks.”

“Raven said you have some original poetry you might want to perform. The Original Performance page is in the back.”

Bellamy flips to the last page and skims it. He’s definitely interested in the club—not just because of Clarke, although she is a pretty big factor—but he’s not really sure about sharing his ridiculous poems with thousands of people. He didn’t even mean to share them with Raven.

“The, uh, Retold thing looks cool,” he decides. “I can just tell any myth?”

“Yeah,” she chirps, clearly excited to see he’s participating. She leans over his arm to turn to a different page, and some of her hair lands on his shoulder. It smells like some sort of fruit that he doesn’t recognize. “You can basically tell any story, as long as it’s within ten minutes. Myths and legends included.”

She gives him a smirk he is absolutely not equipped to handle. “It’s a family event, though, so try to keep it PG.”

“Damn. Guess the Romans are out.”

She laughs, and he feels a little smug about it, before noticing the others are all packing up their stuff.

“I have to get to work,” he says, sorry, but Clarke just waves it off.

“Do you need a ride?”

His instinct is to say no, but—Raven’s usually his ride, and she’s at his house with Octavia. “Yeah, actually. That’d be great.”

Clarke’s BMW is parked at the very end of the parking lot, in the farthest space from the school, he’s pretty sure so she wouldn’t be touching any other parked cars around it.

“I hate backing up,” she admits, tossing their bags in the trunk. “I kind of hate driving in general, actually.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Bellamy,” Clarke sighs, a little exasperated, as she buckles her seatbelt, and checks the mirrors three times. “If I didn’t want to give you a ride, I wouldn’t have offered. I still _have_ to drive, I just don’t like it. Like cooking, or wearing bras.”

Bellamy snorts. “Good to know, I guess.”

When she turns on the radio, it’s some sort of movie soundtrack, with an enormous orchestra and no words. He’s pretty sure it’s from _Lord of the Rings_ or something.

“We should probably talk about the line, or whatever,” he blurts, because the thought’s been on the tip of his tongue since her hand on his knee at lunchtime.

Clarke glances over at him, bemused. “What line?”

“The line in the sand,” he mimes drawing one across the dashboard. “Like, boundaries, or whatever. For the bet.”

She nods, a little awkward, and clears her throat. “That’s a good idea. Okay, where’s your line?”

“Maybe no kissing,” he decides, and she looks over at him guiltily.

“Sorry about this morning,” she starts, but he just waves a hand.

“You’re good, I just—yeah, maybe no more? It’s easier that way.”

“Absolutely,” she agrees. “What else?”

“I guess that’s pretty much it for me. Homecoming’s next week, did you want to—?”

Clarke glances over with a smile. “Did I want to go to Homecoming with my fake boyfriend?” she teases, and he tries very hard not to flush. He tries to focus on _fake_ rather than _boyfriend_. “Yeah, that sounds nice. So, um, how do you feel about holding hands?”

He looks over to see she’s blushing, frowning determinedly out at the road, and he grins. “I’m a fan. Uh, this is my stop.”

Bellamy works part-time as a nail boy—which is essentially just a loose term for janitor—for a small family construction crew, that only hired him because their youngest son just left for State. They mostly go around to old, condemned buildings and renovate them before tossing them back on the market. It’s more expensive than just building a new house from scratch, but the older the building, the more it sells for.

And anyway, it’s not his business. He’s just there to pick up nails and vacuum sawdust.

Clarke pulls up to the work site, a Civil War-era Greek Revival farmhouse just outside of town. The roof’s half caved-in, and the porch is missing most of its pillars and sagging a little, but there’s still an underlying charm to the place. Secretly, Bellamy actually really likes his job—he likes feeling like he’s taking something that everyone else said was unfixable, and he’s bringing it back to life.

“You work in construction,” Clarke says, quiet, and when Bellamy looks over, she’s staring at the house like she just got punched in the gut.

“Uh, yeah.” He’s not really sure what else to say; he can see she’s clearly upset, but he hasn’t got a clue _why_. He likes to have at least most of the facts before he tries out words of comfort.

She seems to realize he’s lost, and grins wryly, mostly to herself. “Sorry, just—my dad was a civil engineer. He used to,” she waves a hand at the house. “He used to work on places like this.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, because what else is there? It’s been years since his mom died, and Bellamy still has no idea how to talk about that kind of stuff. He’s amazed Clarke can. “How old were you?”

“Nine,” she shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of time to get over it.”

“I was thirteen when my mom died,” Bellamy offers, and Clarke eyes him a little sharply, like she’s going back over every interaction they’ve had, with this new information in mind. “Her aunt took us in, and we moved here.”

“I’m glad you did,” Clarke says, serious, so he knows she means it.

He clears his throat, stepping out. “Yeah, me too. Bye, Clarke.”

The carpenters all give him shit about it, having seen her drive off through the window. There are a _lot_ of _Sugar Mama_ jokes thrown his way, but Bellamy just flips them all off and plugs in his headphones, even though he doesn’t even need the distraction. It’s like he left his mind back in her car.

Tristan, one of the electricians, drops him off. Raven’s still there, when he gets inside, sipping one of Indra’s fancy lemonades while O tapes a finished puzzle, so the pieces won’t come apart.

“You did a _puzzle_?” Bellamy frowns. Octavia _never_ liked puzzles, not even when she was little, which he’d always been a little bitter about because puzzles were his favorite as a kid.

“Raven’s friend Wells brought it,” she says, clearly proud of herself. The puzzle itself looks like some sort of impressionist painting, with colorful blurs that might be flowers.

Bellamy raises a brow at Raven, who raises one back. She tips her head towards the kitchen, so he’ll follow her out.

“So, you and Jaha,” he starts, teasing, and she glares at him, which might be fair. They don’t really have heart to hearts about crushes.

He knows a little bit, of course. He knows about Finn, knows they grew up together, and Raven thought they were bound to get married and then take over the world. And he knows about Wick, knows he spent _months_ trying to talk her into a relationship, and he knows she slept with him when she was still messed up from Finn, and he knows Wick used that against her.

He knows she managed to forgive them, and take them back as friends, if slightly awkward. Bellamy thinks that might be why Raven’s so angry, still—because she always manages to forgive everyone but herself.

“Don’t start with that shit,” she hisses, low so Octavia won’t hear. “It’s not like that. It’s—he looks at me like I’m one of those African orphan ads.”

Bellamy frowns, thinking back to their CAD class, and lunch, when Wells had blushed every time Raven corrected his mistake on the computer, or argued over _baking supplies_ , of all things. He decidedly was _not_ looking at her with pity. He’s not sure Wells could look at _anyone_ like that—Wells seems like the kind of person who would see a homeless man and sit down to ask him how his day’s been going.

“And I don’t need that,” Raven adds. “I’ve had enough white knights to last me a last time, each more overrated than the last.”

“O seems to like him,” Bellamy says carefully, and Raven makes a face.

“O likes everybody,” she says, which is decidedly not true. Octavia doesn’t like a lot of people. She _hated_ Raven, when Bellamy first brought her over, because O thought they were dating, and he’d spend less time with her.

But he knows to pick his battles when it comes to Raven Reyes, so Bellamy just shrugs, and gets a pizza from the freezer, while Raven goes to change out her laundry. The laundry’s a recent development, so he’s pretty sure Nygel had a washing machine up until a few weeks ago, but now Raven uses his because she doesn’t want to waste all her quarters on the laundromat.

He isn’t sure if Indra knows just how often Raven stays over, eating their food, and using up all their laundry detergent. He isn’t sure if she even cares. Indra doesn’t really interact with them very much—she keeps the pantry and fridge stocked, keeps the bills paid on time, and if he or O add something to the grocery list on the counter, she’ll get it. Even though they live in the same house, he only really sees his great-aunt a handful of times each week.

“Homecoming’s next Saturday,” he says, when Raven comes back in from the laundry room.

She stares back at him, unimpressed. “Did you want help with dress shopping?”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be an asshole—” She says _too late!_ but he ignores her. “I’m going with Clarke, but I thought you might want to come too? I think she’s bringing Wells along, and Miller will be there.”

It always sounds forced, when one of them tries to convince the other to actively be social, because they’re both hermits at heart.

Raven squints at him a little, like she’s trying to decide whether or not to give him shit about it. “How much are the tickets?”

“Uh, like ten bucks? Weren’t they ten bucks last year?” They’d gone to their sophomore Homecoming mostly just to see what it was like, but got bored twenty minutes in and ended up back at Bellamy’s, playing Guild Wars 2.

“I might go,” she decides, as he pulls the pizza from the oven, setting it on the stovetop to cool. “But if they play any of that bullshit junior high rave shit, I’m out.” She swipes a finger through the melted cheese, and Bellamy swats her hand away with an oven mitt.

Bellamy spends most of the weekend working and being pathetic.

“Why are you even awake right now?” Raven groans from her sleeping bag on the floor. She sort of has a point, since it’s eight AM on a Sunday, but Bellamy can’t help it. He’s staring at his phone screen, and the _three_ little blank boxes from Clarke, that mean she’s sent him three pictures. Except, his phone doesn’t _get_ pictures, which is why he’s freaking out.

“What do I even say?” he asks, mostly to himself, but Raven grumbles anyway.

“Thanks for the nude picks, but my phone won’t let me sext.”

He tosses his pillow at her face, for being actively annoying. “Stop trying to sabotage me,” he snaps, and she laughs a little, tucking the pillow up under her head with a sigh.

“You’re sabotaging yourself—you don’t need my help with that.”

Bellamy scrubs a hand down his face, skewing his glasses a little. “You’re the worst.” Then he texts _sorry, my phone doesn’t get pics_ , because what else could he possibly say?

Except then she calls him.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and Raven _cackles_ on the floor because she’s a traitor. “Uh, hey.”

“Morning,” Clarke says, and she can’t have been up for very long, because her voice is still all gravelly from sleep, which he really cannot handle. “Sorry, about the pictures. They’re just dumb ones of my cat.”

Bellamy laughs, and then Raven shoots her hand out, grabbing for the phone. “Lemme talk to her,” she orders muzzily, and he frowns.

“Raven wants to talk to you,” he says, and only realizes after what that might sound like—that Raven spent the night with him, which she did, but. Clarke’s first thought probably isn’t going to be _oh they’re just best friends who have platonic sleep overs._

Except, maybe it is, because she chirps “Okay, but then Wells wants to ask you about some weird comp class you guys have together.”

He’s still a little dazed, while Raven shit talks him to Clarke, like she’s been doing it for years. Finally, she hangs up—on Wells, he’s pretty sure, which is sort of rude—and tosses his phone on the mattress.

“Are we becoming friends with nicer versions of ourselves?” he asks her, and Raven hits him with his own pillow before rolling over.

“Go back to sleep, loser. It’s too early for your existential bullshit.”

Things go on like that for a while—on Mondays and Fridays, Bellamy goes to Forensics with Clarke, and there are a few new kids each time. Clarke drives him to work, and holds his hand in the cafeteria, and kisses him on the cheek when he drops her off at class.

They are kicking this fake relationship’s _ass_.

And then it’s Saturday, which means Homecoming, which means Bellamy’s freaking out. Again.

“You are so predictable,” Raven hisses through the phone. She’s getting ready with Clarke, because from what he’s learned from movies, that’s the sort of thing girls bond over. Which is nice. Raven could use more friends that aren’t him, and he’s pretty sure Clarke could use more friends in general, so. Win-win.

Except then he calls her in a panic, so now she’s hiding out in the Griffin’s guest bathroom, talking him out of a bowtie. Or, yelling at him about it, which means she cares.

“Just wear the stupid nerd tie,” she says, exasperated, and Bellamy frowns at the tie in question. He got it when he was twelve, at the height of his faux-intellectual phase. It’s bright yellow and it says WWAD? (What would Achilles do? He has regretted this purchase every day of his life.)

But—at Forensics practice that week, Clarke told an Icarus pun, so. She might find it endearing, or something.

He wears the stupid tie.

Octavia hugs him before he leaves, and he promises to try and snag some of those bite-sized mini muffins, if they have any. And then Clarke’s pulling up in the driveway, so he slips out the door.

He slides into the backseat, beside Wells—who he knows Raven has probably reminded _this is not a date_ half a dozen times, by now—and grins helplessly when Clarke turns around to beam at him.

“Ready to kick this Homecoming’s ass?” she asks, and he may be rubbing off on her. Just a little.

He can’t actually see her dress from where he’s sitting, but he can tell that it’s blue, and her hair’s big and curly like usual, but there are little glass beads braided in, that catch the light when she turns. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to survive the night.

“Hell yeah,” he agrees, bumping her fist when she reaches it back.

“Let’s do this,” Raven crows, and switches on the radio. She must have won the rock-paper-scissors match, because _Blitzkrieg Bop_ blares out at them.

The school gym is packed, and 3OH!3 is playing from the speakers, because apparently the DJ is stuck in 2008. It looks every bit like a high school dance should—there are cardboard cutouts of stars and what might be comets, dangling from the ceiling, and they put dry ice in the punch bowl, for some strange reason that probably isn’t good enough. Dry ice should not be put in anything, ever.

Now that they’re standing, Bellamy can see Clarke’s dress perfectly, which is simultaneously the best, and worst. It’s the best because she’s gorgeous, and the back of the dress has a little triangle cutout he really wants to fit his hand through. It’s the worst because he _can’t_ fit his hand through the triangle, and he probably shouldn’t touch her at all. For his own sanity.

She’s wearing a pair of blue sneakers, the cloth kind, and somehow makes them seem fancier than they have any right to be.

At first, he thinks he’s safe, because as it turns out, most of Homecoming is just the kids milling about, eating those little chocolate-dipped strawberries on toothpicks, and hanging out with their friends.

But then they start playing one of _those_ songs—the “Oh, that’s my _favorite_!” songs—and suddenly the room shifts.

Monty’s the one who drags Raven out, waving her cane so everyone’s forced to move and let them into the middle. Dancing is still a little awkward for her, and mostly involves a lot of the hand moves from the Macarena, but she looks happy enough.

And then Wells follows Jasper out, even though he clearly doesn’t know what to do, which is fine since Jasper’s overenthusiasm more than makes up for it. Miller just sort of lurks around, but then Monty does that rope-pull-mime move, and a chorus of _ooh’s_ breaks out, so Miller _has_ to join.

And then it’s just Bellamy and Clarke, painfully obviously not dancing.

“Is this within your line?” she asks, and she’s smiling, a little hopeful, and in what world could he say _no_?

“Let’s show em how it’s done,” he says, taking her hand, and leading her out towards their friends.

He mostly spins her around until she’s stumbling into everyone, because they don’t stay long enough for the slow dances, which he’s only a little disappointed about. Raven’s leg starts bothering her, and she pretends she’s fine just watching from the sidelines, but he knows she hates it, watching everyone do what she can’t.

And Clarke seems to get it, too, because she’s the one who suggests getting tacos.

The taco truck is close enough to walk to, but it’s past ten, and chilly, and Clarke’s wearing one of those wrap-things that come with fancy dresses, and are not even a little bit warm. So Bellamy drapes his jacket over her shoulders, because that’s just common courtesy, right? He’s not even cold. It makes sense.

But then she grins up at him, fitting her arms through the sleeves that are so long her hands don’t even show. And then she frowns a little.

“What?” He hopes he didn’t cross a line of hers—she didn’t mention any in the car, but she might not have thought of them yet.

“I feel…” she fits a hand in his jacket pocket, and pulls out one of O’s Tamagachi’s.

“Octavia,” he grumbles, knowing that wherever his little sister is right now, she’s feeling incredibly sneaky. It’s a little endearing, though; she probably meant it as a good luck charm, or something.

“Is this one of those keychain pets?” Clarke asks, more giddy than anyone has a right to be over Tamagachi’s. “I always wanted one as a kid!”

“What, your mom thought those stunted brain growth, too?” Bellamy has yet to meet Clarke’s mother, and barely knows anything about her really, but he gets the feeling she’s the type of parent who never let their kid eat raw cookie dough. Or maybe even cookies, themselves.

“No, she just thought they were frivolous, and a waste of money,” Clarke says, wry, turning the thing on. She’s clearly enamored.

She keeps playing it while they order their tacos, and then while they eat, sitting out on the curb and pretending not to shiver from the cold of the cement. She keeps playing it while they walk back towards the school, and Bellamy keeps a hold of her elbow so she doesn’t walk off into traffic while she’s looking at the screen.

He almost thinks he’s not getting it back, and he’s trying to come up with an excuse for Octavia, when Clarke pulls up outside his house. Raven had asked to be dropped off at Nygel’s, and then she drove Wells home, even though he lived across from her in Phoenix Park, so it would’ve made more sense to drop Bellamy off first.

He’d like to think she saves him for last because she wants to spend more time with him.

Or maybe with the Tamagachi.

She does hand it, and his jacket, back, as he steps out of the BMW. And then she gets out to give him a hug stronger than he was expecting, for how tiny she is.

“Night, Bell,” she says, stepping back. Her hair’s all messy from the wind, and the dancing, and she’s lost a few of the beads. There are goosebumps up and down her arms and shoulders, and he rubs his hands across them, trying to warm her up.

“Get back in before you die of hypothermia,” he grumbles, but she just laughs, and he waits at the end of the drive until her car disappears.

The next Monday, when Bellamy walks into the spare Algebra room, he sees Monty, Miller and Jasper already waiting, along with the other club members. They’re up to seventeen.

But Clarke’s missing, which is strange since she’s usually there before anyone. He slides into the seat in front of Miller, and turns around to see him playing a three-way game of tic-tac-toe with Monty and Jasper, sketching the marks on the plaster of his desk.

“Have you guys seen Clarke?”

Almost like she heard her name, Clarke chooses that moment to blow into the room like a hurricane, thrusting a sheet of paper up in the air with her fist. “We did it!” she crows, grinning, and then catches sight of Bellamy standing up from his chair.

He barely has a second to prepare himself before he has his arms filled with Clarke, and her hair in his mouth, smelling overwhelmingly of fruit. She’s laughing, still clutching the paper that’s crinkling behind his back. “ _We did it_ ,” she says again, just for him, and he’s too busy enjoying the feel of her, to ask her what the hell it is they did.

But then Monroe asks for him, and Clarke pulls back, holding up the paper for everyone to see. “We’re official,” she says, eyes bright. “And our first competition is in two weeks, against Ground High, so get practicing!”

“How’d you manage that, princess?” Bellamy skims the paper before she can snatch it back—it’s pretty generic stuff; their official club title, the names of their members, a tournament schedule for the year.

Clarke pins it up on the whiteboard, proud. “We needed twenty members,” she shrugs, and Bellamy does a quick headcount.

“We have eighteen—and that’s including Wells, who isn’t even here half the time.”

Clarke looks back at him, smug, and points to the last two names on the roster—Raven Reyes, and John Murphy.

“How the hell did that happen?”

She shrugs, picking up her notebook. “Beats me. I think Raven just got sick of me whining to her about it. And yesterday Murphy just showed up, wrote his name down, and then left.”

Bellamy looks back at her, grave. “He’s up to something.”

“I don’t really care what he’s up to, as long as we’re sanctioned by the school.” She flips her notebook open, and calls out, “Okay, Harper and Fox? Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Bellamy finds Raven in his living room, going over her Chem Lab notes, and texting someone with the old itouch that she rewired to work as a phone. He slides down to sit beside her on the carpet, while Octavia makes some sort of weird antennae/crown out of tin foil.

“You joined the Forensics Club,” he says, and Raven rolls her eyes a little.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs. “Clarke pretty much begged me.”

He ruffles her hair until she scowls, and grins. “Whatever you say, Reyes.”

He’s working on the old house on a Wednesday afternoon, when Clarke shows up out of nowhere.

She’s wearing an old shirt that’s two sizes too big, counteracted by a pair of shorts so tiny they disappear underneath it, and those blue cloth sneakers that’ll do nothing to protect against nails. Her hair’s piled in a mess on top of her head, like she was in a rush to get it out of the way, and she finds him on a ladder in the middle of what’s going to be the dining room, messing around with the drywall.

He’s covered in sweat and grime that stuck to the sweat, and plaster dust, and has ancient moldy insulation fluff in his hair, and she’s still the best thing he’s ever seen, ever.

He’s on his own for the shift, because the union cuts out around four, and it’s nearing six-thirty. Just him and Clarke in this old, run-down hazard of a house.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, a little panicked. He and Clarke don’t really hang out, outside of the school building. He wouldn’t be opposed to it—it’s just not something he’s managed to make happen, yet.

Clarke frowns a little. “Raven said you were here,” she says, like that explains everything. “I was going to ask if you wanted to study for the World Myth test, but then I thought you might need some help. She said your bosses are dickweeds.”

Bellamy scrubs a hand down his face, which probably just makes it _worse_. He forgot he was wearing his stained work gloves. “She probably said that exactly,” he agrees, and starts down the ladder. “You really shouldn’t be here—it’s dangerous,” he lectures, and Clarke makes a face.

As if on cue, she takes a step and immediately yelps, clutching at her foot. Bellamy hops the last three rungs, and runs over. His work boots have thick soles, so he doesn’t have to watch his step—but Clarke’s sneaker is turning a ruddy brown from her blood, and he feels sick to his stomach.

“I have to take you to the hospital,” he says, and she blinks tears from her eyes, wiping at her face like she’s embarrassed. “You’ll need a tetanus shot.”

“I’m all up to date,” she swears, glaring down at her feet, like they’ve offended her.

Bellamy bites back a grin, and turns around. “Better safe than sorry,” he says. “Come on.”

He can feel Clarke staring at him. “What?”

Bellamy cracks his neck and stretches his shoulders. “Come on, hop up. I’ll carry you to your car.”

“Bellamy I am not getting on your back,” she scoffs, and he tips his head to look back at her.

“Why not? I give Octavia piggy backs all the time.”

Clarke snorts. “I’m, like, a hundred pounds heavier than your sister.”

“Ah,” Bellamy sighs, and then reaches back and scoops her up, standing so quickly she’s forced to loop her arms around his neck, so she doesn’t fall.

“You’re such an asshole,” she snaps, and knees him in the side with her good leg before readjusting to get comfortable. Bellamy shifts her up a little, trying not to groan—she _is_ a lot heavier than Octavia. She just looks so _small_ ; it takes him by surprise.

He’s almost to her car when she leans forward, mouth just centimeters away from his neck, so close he shivers. “Thanks, Bell,” she says, quiet, and he squeezes her thighs to let her know he heard.

“You do have your license, right?” she asks, as he starts up her car. It really is intimidatingly fancy. There are a lot of glowing buttons and he has no idea what any of them are for.

“In theory,” he says, but she doesn’t look very reassured.

In the end, he gets them to the hospital without incident. It turns out the BMW is a lot like Indra’s old Buick, except it doesn’t whine when he breaks, and it doesn’t smell like whiskey and mothballs.

He offers to carry her into the building, but she flatly refuses, so he just helps her hobble, instead.

“You don’t have to wait with me,” she tells him, _again_. She’s filled out all the forms already, and they’re just waiting for the nurse to take her into one of the back rooms.

Bellamy shrugs. “You showed up to help me, and stepped on a nail. So it’s sort of my fault, if you think about it.”

“It’s not,” Clarke says, harsh, glaring down at her feet again. Bellamy’s not sure she’ll ever forgive them. “I was stupid. I should have been more careful. Will you get in trouble, for leaving?”

“Nah, they’re pretty relaxed. I, um, was technically off at five, anyway. But I got in a fight with the drywall, and didn’t want it to win.”

Clarke grins. “So what I’m hearing is, I saved you from dueling drywall to the death.”

He nudges his knee against hers. “Yeah, exactly. You’re basically my hero.”

She huffs a laugh, and then worries her lip a little, like she’s not sure how to word what she’s going to say. “So, Raven…”

“We’re just friends,” he blurts, because— _god_ , he really doesn’t care what everyone else thinks about him and his best friend, but he really hopes Clarke gets it.

She slides her hand in his, even though his is still filthy and covered in old house guts. “I know,” she says, teasing. “I just meant—her step-mom? Or is it her foster mom?”

“Foster.”

“Right, so, her foster mom. She’s kind of awful, right?”

Bellamy laughs a little, dry. “Yeah, you can say that.”

“Okay, so why don’t we help her?”

Bellamy studies Clarke closely. Raven’s been spending a lot more time with her, by choice, which is a good sign. She’s slept over at her enormous house a few nights, and ranted to him about how comfortable everything was in the morning. But as far as he knows, Clarke’s never been in Nygel’s house, or met her, or heard the way she speaks to Raven. She probably doesn’t know about Raven’s stuff filling up his room, just because she doesn’t trust her foster mom not to sell it.

If Raven doesn’t want _Wells_ , who she barely interacts with, not to know about her shitty home life, she definitely won’t want Clarke to.

“We are helping,” he says, careful. “By being there when she needs us. Raven doesn’t want help dealing with Nygel. She just wants us to have her back.”

“We do,” Clarke says, earnest, and he can’t bite his smile.

“Yeah we do.”

The nurse calls her name then, but Clarke doesn’t let go of his hand, just tugs him along down the hall with her, as she stubbornly limps.

The shot doesn’t actually take very long—barely five minutes, in the flesh of her upper arm. She winces a little, and then makes a face at him over the nurse’s shoulder when he grins.

The nurse wraps her foot, and they’re just waiting for her to come back with the insurance forms, so they can fill them out and leave. Clarke’s sitting on the edge of the metal bunk, swinging her legs back and forth, while Bellamy leans on the far wall, watching.

She’s staring out the window when she says, “My dad died when he fell of a ladder.”

Bellamy blinks at her, a little startled. He’s still trying to figure out what to say, when she speaks again.

“It wasn’t even a high fall. Just one story. It shouldn’t have even broken his leg or anything. But he wasn’t wearing his helmet, and there was cement underneath, so when he landed he hit his head. Died instantly.”

It take him a moment to realize why the story sounds familiar—because he’d heard it before. They used her fucking dad’s death in a video he’d had to watch at a safety seminar, when he first got the job. They used him as a _warning_.

“I know it seems stupid,” she looks down at her hands, folded in her lap. “Checking both ways _three_ times before crossing, never looking away from the road when I drive, but—they’re such little things, you know? Tiny things that save lives every day.”

“Like a helmet,” he says, and she gives a rueful grin.

“Like a helmet,” she agrees. “Or actual boots.”

He’s about to cross over and hug her, because—this moment deserves a hug, right? They’ve hugged before, so it’s not like it’s against the rules, or anything—when a doctor walks in the room.

Clarke’s eyes go wide. “Mom.”

“Clarke, what on earth _happened_ ,” the doctor says, sounding a little stern but mostly tired. Bellamy wonders how hard it might be to sneak out the door, or maybe the window. They’re on the first floor, so he won’t have to go far.

But then Clarke’s mom seems to notice she isn’t alone with her daughter, and zeroes in on him.

“That’s, um, my boyfriend,” Clarke offers, unsure. “Bellamy.”

It’s been easy, so far, to forget the whole fake relationship thing. He and Clarke are basically friends at this point, so it feels normal to sit together at lunch or in class, or in the Forensics meetings. Hugs and holding hands aren’t _really_ that strange. Well, maybe the hand holding, but it’s more of a comfort thing, anyway.

But then someone will mention it, or they’ll have to introduce each other, and he remembers—everything about what they’re doing is fake.

Until now, it hasn’t really felt like a lie, so much as acting. But until now, the only people they’ve been lying to are people their own age.

For a very real moment, Bellamy is positive Clarke’s doctor mother is about to drag him out of the building by his ear—that is the exact look she’s giving.

But then he remembers what he looks like; a chimney sweep, essentially. Like he just bathed in soot and spider webs.

“Uh, nice to meet you,” he offers, and her face shutters off instantly.

“Hello, Bellamy. I’m Abby, Clarke’s mother.”

“I’d offer to shake your hand, but,” he holds his up in explanation, and one small side of her mouth quirks up. He counts it a victory.

Abby turns back to Clarke, voice low. “We’ll talk about this at home.” Then she straightens up, offers one last forced smile to Bellamy, and walks out.

Clarke slumps back instantly, and he lets out a low whistle. “Good to know she already hates me,” he says, wry, and Clarke frowns.

“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just, stand-offish, that’s all.”

“Nah, pretty sure she hates me,” he grins. “But that might be good for you, right? I can be your rebellious phase, like Judd Nelson in _The Breakfast Club_.”

But Clarke doesn’t smile, or laugh. She hops down from the bunk, stepping gingerly with her injured foot, and letting him put an arm around her waist to steady her.

She glares up at him harshly. “You’re not a rebellious phase,” she snaps. “Don’t let anyone tell you that, it’s shitty. You’re a person.”

“I know I’m a person,” he says, a little awed. She just huffs, limping towards the exit, and he squeezes her waist a little. “Thanks, Clarke. For protecting my honor.”

“Someone’s got to,” she sniffs, and he wears the same stupid grin for the whole drive home.

Bellamy doesn’t tell Indra about the competition until the Poker Night before, after she’s won the pot and is at her most charitable. He knows he probably should have mentioned it sooner, but he also doesn’t actually _see_ Indra until Poker Night.

“Hey, uh, I have a thing on Saturday,” he starts, and Indra raises a single unimpressed brow. Indra could have whole conversations with just her eyebrows. “It’s gonna go until late, and I have to leave early. It’s for school—can you watch Octavia? Raven’s coming too, so she can’t.”

Indra shrugs a little, and pours more of her expensive-smelling bourbon that she keeps in an old Vaseline glass jug. “Of course,” she says, like it’s obvious, which is more than a little infuriating. Not once has Indra ever tried to interact with Octavia, or babysit her, or even watch her in the mornings while Bellamy gets ready for school.

But he keeps his mouth shut, because he knows how to pick his battles. And Indra always wins.

Bellamy’s not really sure why he’s surprised, when the actual day comes. They’ve been practicing for two weeks, moving to three, sometimes four afternoons a week, just to make sure everything’s polished. He’s chosen to read _Bacchus_ by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which Raven said was predictable, but he doesn’t even care. It’s one of his favorite poems, and he knows it by heart—but he’s still fundamentally nervous, and a little surprised they even made it this far.

Octavia stuffs _three_ Tamagachi’s in his bag, just in case. He’s honestly not sure how she even has so many; he thinks they might be breeding.

He meets Clarke in the school parking lot, looking bleary-eyed but happy all the same, clutching two coffees, one of which she holds out to him. “Ready to show them who’s boss?”

He grins, and clinks his cup against hers, to toast. “They won’t know what hit em.”

Raven’s already on the activity bus when they climb inside, stretching her bad leg over one of the seats. Wells is there, too, and Miller in the back, with his head against the window and his beanie pulled over his eyes. Then Bellamy starts to headcount, and realizes they’re _all_ there, except—

Murphy shoulders past him with a gruff “Scuse me,” before slinking into the seat behind Wells. Bellamy’s not really sure what he’s even doing here—he knows his name’s on the roster, but he hasn’t shown up to a single practice.

So he sits down and asks him. “Why’re you here?” He’s expecting a sneered _Why not?_ Or maybe that Murphy’s trying to spy on him and Clarke, for the bet, or something.

But instead he just shrugs. “Jaha asked. Said I owed him.”

Bellamy just stares for a moment, because—since when does _Murphy_ pay up on his debts? But Murphy just stubbornly keeps staring out the window, and eventually Bellamy stands to make his way back to Clarke.

She’s handing out t-shirts from a box, and it takes him a moment to realize they’re _team_ shirts, one for each, with their last name and a number printed on the back, like a football jersey.

She grins and tosses a navy blue one at his face, and when he holds it out to look at it, he sees the letters in BLAKE are bedazzled.

It still chokes him up a little, because he’s pathetic, and because—besides Octavia, and Raven giving him weird Frankenstein machines for his birthday, like the labeler that was part walkie-talkie—no one’s ever actually _made_ him something. Or actually given him a gift. Sure, his mom would get him new school clothes for Christmas, but that’s not the same thing.

“Wow you’re really gunning for that weird art section,” he teases, sitting beside her on the bench seat.

Clarke just grins. “It’s gonna happen, just wait.”

He really hopes it does. He wants people to be happy, in a general way, just because he thinks people deserve happiness—but Clarke. He wants a lot of things, for Clarke.

Bellamy’s been to Ground High exactly one time in his life, back when he ran track in tenth grade. He wasn’t that great at it, could have worked on his technique, but he has longer legs than most kids his age back then, so he did alright. He didn’t realize at the time that was the year he’d stop growing.

The school is exactly as he remembers it; made out of brick, more tall than wide, and sort of generally boring.

But there are teams from seven other schools there, which is half of the entire county, so it’s still a little intimidating when they first walk in.

Clarke herds them all over to the tables, and he manages to grab Fox when she starts to get left behind, so they can sign in and get their nametags, and the room numbers where they’ll be performing.

The performances are private, Clarke’s explained, with just three kids from different schools in one room, and five judges. There will be three rounds, in three separate rooms, and at the end all of the judges will pick three finalists for each category. Then _those_ kids have to compete against each other, to determine a winner in each.

It sounded pretty simple when she first told him, but now that he’s looking around the massive auditorium, filled with hundreds of students and parents and teachers, he’s feeling a little overwhelmed.

Clarke comes up beside him, and strokes the skin above his pulse point. “You’ll do fine,” she smiles, and he really wishes he’d never made that fucking no-kissing rule. She looks entirely too kissable.

“Yeah, you too,” he agrees, and then scoops her up in a hug, because he actually has no chill, whatsoever. “Knock em dead, princess.”

She’s a little pink when he sets her down, which he considers a job well done. And then he sees Raven arguing with a vendor over potato chips, so he scoops her up too, so she’ll laugh at how ridiculous he is, and stop taking her nerves out on the poor chip lady.

“You’re gonna be great,” he promises, and she socks him in the arm. Physical assault is how Raven shows affection.

“I know,” she agrees. “I’m awesome.”

Bellamy doesn’t actually get to see Clarke perform her piece—a scene from the Greek tragedy _Medea_ , performed as a slam poem—but he does see Monroe read her story, some Scottish children’s book about a stew, and he sees Raven kick some other kid’s ass over an article about ableism. She gets _applause_ at the end, and he whoops the loudest.

He feels pretty good about his own performance. He doesn’t stumble over any of the words, and he manages to keep his own rhythm pretty consistently, and so when they call his name as one of the finalists in _Prose/Poetry_ , he’s not really surprised.

But then they call Clarke’s name for the same category, and he nearly laughs when she makes faces at him from across the stage.

The third finalist is from Ground, a stocky guy who reads some World War One poetry, and he’s even pretty good. Maybe even better than Bellamy.

But then Clarke blows them both out of the water—from the minute she starts, everyone watching knows she’s going to win.

In the end, they bring home three trophies; Clarke comes first in _Prose/Poetry_ , Sterling comes third in _Apologetics_ , and Raven grabs second place in _Extemp_. It’s better than Bellamy was expecting, and it’s clearly better than any of them were expecting, because the whole team floats back to the bus. Wells takes a picture of everyone and the trophies.

“First front page,” he grins.

It’s past sundown by now, and the drive back is warm because everybody’s talking, still on the adrenaline rush of performing. Clarke’s nestled in against Bellamy’s chest, and Raven keeps glancing over to give him a thumbs up, or mime gagging, depending.

Bellamy’s feeling better than he has in weeks, and he’s still tired from the early-morning wake up call, so he’s just on the edge of sleep, when Raven says “Who here has played the hickey game?”

His eyes snap open in time to see her smirking directly at him, and he feels Clarke shift in his arms. “Raven, no,” he warns, and she fucking _grins_.

“Raven, yes,” she says, clapping her hands. “Alright, pair up! Let’s see which lucky couple gets the crown.”

He and Clarke have two options, he knows. Option one, they say they don’t want to play the stupid game. Which would be fine, no one would force them, but it would look fucking _weird_ , since they’re supposedly dating—and Murphy might call them out. Option two, they play the stupid game, which.

Well, there’s a very real possibility he might die, so there’s that.

He can feel how tense Clarke is against him, so he dips down to whisper into her hair. “We’ll only do whatever you’re comfortable with.”

She nods, just barely, and then says “What’s the hickey game?”

Raven smiles pleasantly, and Bellamy imagines flicking her in the head. He can’t right now, because of Clarke, but _oh, if he could…_ “I’m glad you asked, oh fearless leader.” He’s pretty sure Clarke makes, which she ignores. “The hickey game is exactly what it sounds like—one half of the couple sucks on the other half’s neck, and whichever couple ends up with the most obvious hickey wins.”

“What do we win?” Bellamy asks, just to make things difficult.

“Our undying love and respect,” Raven shoots back.

“Nah, how about the winner chooses where to keep the trophies,” Miller suggests, and Bellamy turns around to high five him. He can always count on Miller. There’s no way Raven will let go of her trophy—he’s pretty sure it’s the first thing she’s ever physically won.

But instead she just narrows her eyes a little, hands on her hips, and says “Fine.” She glares around at the bus in general, and then grins a little viciously. “Harper, you’re mine.”

Harper doesn’t seem all that put out by it, stumbling up to Raven’s bench. All around, people are shifting seats, whether to take themselves out of the game, or to be close to the partner they want. Monty ends up basically in Miller’s lap, while Fox and Monroe are eyeing each other a little heatedly, and Roma slides in beside Dax.

Bellamy’s pretty sure this whole game is just an excuse for teenagers to make out in dark buses.

“Everyone ready?” Raven calls, voice low, Harper’s mouth near the base of her neck.

Clarke shifts so Bellamy can move her hair a little, until the white skin of her throat shows. Raven glances at them and frowns. “Hey, no way—Clarke’s too pale, that’s basically cheating. Hers will automatically be darker than mine.”

Bellamy glares over at her. “You should’ve mentioned that before, then.”

“I’m mentioning it _now_.”

“You—” Clarke cuts him off with a hand on his arm, pushing him back a little.

“Bell, it’s fine,” she says, a little teasing, even though he can tell she’s still nervous. “I know how to give a hickey.”

Bellamy watches as she worries her lip a little, clearly debating, before just swinging a leg over his lap, setting herself right up against him. She runs her nose against his Adam’s apple. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he can’t even be embarrassed about how shaky his voice is, because now she’s licking her lips, and her mouth is so close he feels her tongue on his skin.

“Where do you want it?”

He should probably feel like a creep, getting turned on right now, with Clarke in his lap, but—he’s pretty sure she expected it, at least. Hopefully she doesn’t get too horrified, or anything.

“Wherever the hell you want,” he manages to grind out pretty evenly, and he feels the flash of her teeth when she grins.

“Don’t worry,” she whispers, “I won’t kiss you.” And then she’s pressing her mouth, open and wet and hot, up against him. He barely bites back a whine.

Bellamy’s gone to a few bases with a few different girls. He’s made out, messed around a little, and gotten hickeys. He’s gotten a pretty fair amount of hickeys, in different places, but they were all basically the same.

But none of them were like _this_ , and he knows it’s because this is Clarke, and it takes embarrassingly little for her to get him hot.

He’s not sure what to do with his hands at first, but then she starts making little mewling noises into his neck, and getting closer and closer, so he raises his arms to fist at her shirt. His hands slip underneath it a little, around the skin of her back, and she makes another tiny noise of appreciation.

If nothing else, this probably means she’s at least a little into him, which he can work with. He already knows she likes him enough to hang out, so if she wants to hang out and also grind against his crotch a little, he’d be fine with it.

But eventually, he feels the lace band of her bra, so he slips his hand back out and brings it to her hair, which feels safer. It still smells like the tropical fruit platter at hotel breakfast buffets. But he actually sort of likes it. It keeps sticking to the clothes he wears around her, even after they go through the wash.

They’re pulling into the Ark High parking lot, when Clarke finally releases his skin with a wet _pop_. Her mouth is swollen, and there’s some spit on her chin and upper lip, but she looks altogether proud of herself, reaching out to trace the spot she’s left on his neck.

“Blue Ribbon worthy?” he asks, voice hoarse for no reason. It’s not like he screamed or anything—mostly he just swallowed a lot of embarrassing whines.

Clarke grins, teeth bright in the darkness, her whole face lit eerily by the streetlamps outside. “Definitely.”

They have Maya judge, since she’s the most impartial, and she declares Clarke the winner.

“They’re going in the practice room,” she declares, smug, fingers still woven in his.

“You mean the spare Algebra room,” he grins, and she pinches his stomach. “Wanna drive me home?”

The grin she gives him is soft, and private. “Yeah, I did sort of maul you. Taking you home is the least I could do.”

He swings an arm around her shoulder, flipping Raven off as they leave—she may be the reason he got to feel Clarke Griffin grinding down on his dick, but he’s still going to murder her. “It really is.”

The Cinematic Orchestra plays softly while she drives, and neither of them speak.

Bellamy’s still trying to find the right words, since _wanna date for real this time?_ seems a little lacking, when Clarke pulls up to his curb.

She squeezes his wrist, where it rests near the console. “Bye, Bellamy.”

 _It’s now or never_ , he thinks, and decides to just go for it. They always just kiss the girl, in the movies, and everything sorts itself out later. Actions speak louder than words, and all that.

But when he leans in, she jerks back so quickly she hits her head on the window, and winces.

“Are you okay?” he asks, because if he says anything else, it’ll sound awful. He’d thought…

Well, it doesn’t matter what he’d thought. He only wants this, if she does too, and clearly she doesn’t. He’s not about to push for more than she’ll give him. He doesn’t want to be Wick, or Finn— _god_.

Clarke nods a little too jaggedly. “I’m fine,” she says, and Bellamy nods, opens his door.

“Sorry,” he offers. “I—just, sorry. I’ll see you Monday?”

The smile she gives him isn’t as bright as he’s used to, but it looks a little relieved. “Yeah. Yes, see you Monday.”

He doesn’t bother watching her leave, he just heads upstairs to the bathroom. The mirror’s ancient, maybe even as old as Indra herself, so there are spots throughout, where the reflective bit has flaked away.

But there’s still enough for him to make out the mark, wide and shiny purple just below his jawline. He’ll have to wear a turtleneck or something to school.

He collapses on his bed—he’s had it since middle school, and his legs hang off the end now, and it’s way too skinny. But it’s _his_ , and it’s worn-in, used to his body. He pulls out his phone, and writes a text to Clarke that’s way too long, too wordy, too emotional. So he erases it and starts again, but that one’s even worse. He writes a third one, and then a fourth, and then just turns his phone off without sending any of them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy’s just inside the hallway, looming, which is his default setting. “I never liked lamps,” he says, sipping a Canada Dry. Raven tips the can up so he splutters.
> 
> “Good,” she snaps, marching down the hall, cane and heels clicking on the hardwood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so! this is definitely going to be longer than 5 chapters. I'm not sure how long it'll be yet, but longer than that. 
> 
> and if you're interested, this is raven's costume:  
> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/18/d6/64/18d664d8d2d53f6303c9247704736784.jpg
> 
> also yes, there is a trc reference in this.

Bellamy doesn’t call Raven, but he wakes up to find her setting things on fire.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls, grabbing his work boot and stomping on the flames until they die out.

“It’s incense,” Raven sniffs, glaring at the pile of ash now staining his floor. “Jaha said it’s supposed to make you feel better, or some shit. I don’t know. But he gave me a bunch and it’s not like _I’m_ gonna use them.”

Bellamy glances over to see a pile of little incense packets stacked carefully on top of his dresser, next to her jewelry box and the ancient Toshiba she rewired to work photoshop. His dresser is where she stores what’s most important, the things she doesn’t want to lose.

“How exactly is some weird-smelling stick supposed to make me feel better?” he asks, and Raven glares at him.

“Well _excuse_ me for trying to be a good friend, dickwad. Next time you can cheer your own self up, damn.”

“Isn’t it supposed to just smoke?” He nudges the charred bits with a bare toe. “I thought it was like impossible to catch these things on fire.”

Raven just shrugs and flops down on the edge of his bed, stretching her bad leg out so the brace creaks. He’s not sure where her cane is. She probably tossed it somewhere in the kitchen, as an extra _fuck you_ to the world, and then spent fifteen minutes climbing the stairs just to prove she could do it.

“What makes you think I need cheering up?”

She gives him a very unimpressed look. “Clarke called me.”

There’s a stockpile of mortification that’s just been waiting to flood out at the mention of her name, and Bellamy sighs a little, flopping down on his stomach, beside her.

She slaps his back a few times. It’s somehow less comforting than if she’d done nothing at all.

“Did she tell you?”

There’s a pause, where she’s clearly trying to decide if she should lie. “She told me enough.”

He lifts his head, to rest his chin on his comforter. “I just—I thought she was interested. I don’t know.”

“She doesn’t deserve you,” Raven says dutifully, and he huffs a laugh.

“Pretty sure you’ve got that backwards, Reyes.”

She flicks him in the cheek. “I don’t. She turned you down, so I get to say she doesn’t deserve you. That’s how it works. C’mon, Blake, get with the program.”

It’s a nice sentiment, and he can’t help grinning into his blanket. But it doesn’t make him feel better, not really, because the thing is—she didn’t do anything _wrong_. “I thought you liked Clarke?”

“I do,” Raven says, flopping down on her back to stare up at his ceiling. “Clarke’s awesome. I thought she was interested, too, that’s why I—sorry.”

As far as apologies go, it’s a pretty lame one, but he takes it anyway. Raven reaches over to poke the hickey on his neck, and he swats her hand away.

“So you’re getting presents from Jaha now?” He really only asks to see if she wants to talk about it. Heart to hearts about relationships is new territory for them.

Raven shrugs a shoulder, which is actually kind of hard to do laying down. “He feels sorry for me,” she says, matter-of-fact. She does this, sometimes; convinces her that pity is the only reason someone might do something for her, or pretend to care. He’s not sure if she ever really believes good things can happen, just because. But he’s not really sure if he does, either.

“Wick offered me a job,” she adds, as an after-thought. “I haven’t decided if I’m gonna take it.”

Bellamy frowns. “When’d you talk to Wick?”

She does the one-shoulder shrug again. “Couple of weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shuts her eyes, and if she smoked, he’s pretty sure she’d take a drag right now. Very Sharon Stone. “Didn’t know if I was gonna take it.”

Bellamy studies her for a minute—she looks tired. More than usual. The hickey Harper left looks like a mottled thumb print, near her jaw. She doesn’t really look like she slept last night.

“What do you and Clarke talk about?”

Raven smirks a little, because he’s predictable. “Movies, school. I don’t know—stuff. Guys.”

“Me?”

“Not everything is about you, asshole.” She sounds a little more biting than usual, and Bellamy flinches without really meaning to. She doesn’t say sorry. She doesn’t say anything.

“You want breakfast?”

She opens her eyes, waving both hands towards the ceiling. “ _Obviously_.”

He pours them both Lucky Charms and then goes back upstairs to kick O awake so she can eat, too. Then they all sit down to waste a few hours watching some PBS show about a cat that can write with her tail.

Bellamy doesn’t actually realize he’s going to have to interact with Clarke, until Monday morning—which is stupid, since he spent all of Sunday redrafting the same text to her over and over while still never sending it—and he finds her waiting for him on the ancient wooden bench outside the school.

The bench itself is probably older than the building, and looks worse for wear, with splintering boards sort of holding together by sheer force of will. Everyone and their mother has written on it, from their initials, to their initials and their significant other’s initials, to _Josie went down on a horse once_ in big neon green letters. It doesn’t look like it should be able to hold a stack of books, let alone Clarke.

And yet, there she is perched on the stupid bench, wearing a too-big sweater, and one of those hats with the pompoms on the tops, a to-go cup of coffee in each of her hands.

She’s worrying her lip a little, looking nervous, and he hates that his stomach lurches a little at the sight.

She hops up as soon as she sees him, shoving one of the cups in his hands before babbling. “I wanted to say sorry, about Saturday,” she starts, and Bellamy fights a grimace, tipping the cup to his face.

It’s delicious, the same kind that she gave him two days ago. There’s chocolate and cinnamon at the bottom, and he licks his lips to chase the taste. “Don’t be, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Clarke frowns a little. “I did—I crossed your boundary, and I’m sorry. You’re right; it’s easier this way, and I just made everything complicated, and—”

“Clarke, seriously, you’re good. I wasn’t exactly saying Red Light or anything.” But she still looks a little miserable, so Bellamy switches the cup to his other hand, and swings an arm around her. It feels a little resigned, without the bloom of possibility in his chest, without the thought _maybe she feels the same way_ blinking like a five-and-dime OPEN sign in his mind. But she still leans into his side pretty instantly, so there’s that.

“I just don’t want to take advantage of you,” she says, so serious he almost laughs.

The idea that she could possibly even begin to think he didn’t want everything that happened—that he doesn’t want it to happen again—is mind-boggling. He’s officially boggled.

“I don’t think you ever could,” he admits with a shrug. He’s not about to spill his guts, laying all his weird emotions on top of her like a wet blanket. _Hey, fyi, I think you’re the best thing ever and I can’t get the smell of your hair out of my head and I’d let you sit in my lap anytime_ —he’s definitely not putting that on her. She already made it clear how she feels, it wouldn’t be fair.

But he’s not going to let her beat herself up about it, either.

Clarke looks up at him, smiling ruefully. “I feel like you think I’m some _saint_ , or something.”

“Nah,” he finishes off his coffee, and tosses the cup in the hall trash before grinning. “Saints aren’t that good at the Hickey Game.”

She flushes almost instantly, which is gratifying, and her eyes stray to where the mark’s covered up by the wool scarf he took from Indra’s closet. It’s cold enough that he can get away with it outside, and if anyone asks why he’s wearing it in class he can just say it’s a fashion statement or something.

Of course, they’ll all probably guess the truth anyway, but. He’d rather keep the mark to himself.

“So,” Clarke says, once they reach her class. She blinks up at him through her lashes, biting that lip again. He’s not sure how she hasn’t broken the skin, yet. Probably all the Burt’s Bees—because of course she uses the fanciest chapstick. “We’re good?”

He tugs at her pompom, grinning when she shoves him away. “We’re good. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Bellamy sinks into the chair beside Wells, who’s leaning over to watch Raven make a virtual dinosaur on the computer. He sets his forehead on the desk with a groan, and hears Raven heave a monumental sigh, which is fair. He’s been a lot more pathetic than usual lately, and she’s probably sick of it.

Wells sets a warm hand on his shoulder, gentle, like one might pet a dog.

“Your best friend is confusing,” he says, and Wells pats him a little.

“I know,” he says, completely unhelpful, and Raven snorts in the background. “Raven taught me to make a person, want to see?”

“He’s shit at it,” Raven says, as Bellamy turns to look at the monitor. He sees something that _might_ be a person, if people usually came with no arms and a strange half-sized leg that might instead be a small tail.

“Looks good, buddy,” Bellamy says, and Raven shakes her head in disgust.

“Shit,” she says, low, like she honestly doesn’t understand how someone could fuck up so badly.

But Wells looks relatively pleased with his creation, and saves it under the name Robert01.png, and then shrugs. “It’s a process.”

He and Miller manage to catch their roast on fire in Home Ec. Mrs. Kane doesn’t even yell at them about it, just grabs the mini fire extinguisher and sighs a little, resigned and used to it by now. They have to sit in the back working on needlepoint for the rest of the class, to make up the grade, which Bellamy’s actually cool with. Needlepoint’s his best bet at passing the course, at this point, while Miller just carefully watches and copies what he does.

Miller ends up with a crude pirate ship that looks like it was drawn by a two-year-old, which is actually pretty good for Miller. Usually he manages to snap the thread halfway through, and has to start over.

Bellamy’s is a metaphor for the human condition, which is his go-to explanation for whenever he’s just bullshitting around with the needle, to see what’ll come out. This time it’s a staircase, which would be fine, except that’s all there is. Just a staircase, leading to and from absolutely nothing, indefinitely suspended in needlepoint space. He adds some threaded flowers around it, for variety.

“I think this is the first time that metaphor bullshit might actually apply,” Miller admits, staring down at it.

Bellamy shrugs. “Human condition; works every time.”

It’s not even _hard_ being around Clarke, not like he thought it would be. They’re pretty much the same, except with a lot less cuddling and casual affection. And when they do hug, or hold hands in the hallways, it feels more careful, like each time they touch they’re asking for permission.

It’s not _awful_ , but. It’s not really great. Mostly it feels like he’s back at the beginning, except worse, because now he _knows_ Clarke, and he knows how awesome she is, and he knows what she feels like when she’s sucking on his neck, so. It’s not like he can just un-know all of that.

She still sits next to him in Ancient History, and pulls out her sketchbook to work on what might be Nefertiti, but also might be Ramses II—he can’t quite tell—and he spends the first fifteen minutes debating with himself, before sliding her the note.

She snorts a little when she reads it, smirking over at him, before writing down her answer and sliding it back.

_Who would you rather marry--Zeus or Hades?_

In her neat, flowy cursive: _Athena, but Hades if she says no._ She's crossed Zeus out completely, which seems fair.

But then Clarke takes it back and makes him pick between Odin and Loki, even though she _knows_ Norse is the mythology he knows the least about.

It goes on like that for a while, until he actually gets a good look at the drawing she’s abandoned.

“Is that _us_?” he asks, picking it up for closer inspection. They’re supposed to be packing up their things to leave, but he can’t help staring.

It’s definitely the Forensics Club, but as different mythological creatures, posing with their trophies just like in Wells’s photograph. He can’t tell what all all of them are supposed to be, but Jasper’s got a pair of hooves like a satyr, and Miller’s got a single eye in his forehead, and a pair of swim trunks, and Monroe is clearly a centaur. Raven’s a cyborg, and Bellamy is the most detailed, with vines growing all up and down his body, beside Clarke, who’s got a mermaid tail, and is half-sitting in one of those little kiddie pools that parents keep in their front yards, for toddlers and dogs. It’s a little hard to tell, since there’s no color, but the whole thing is impressive. It must have taken her _hours_ ; there’s no way she started it in class.

“Um, yeah, that’s—I just had it stuck in my head all weekend.” When he looks up, she’s going pink and fidgeting, like she didn’t want him to know.

He puts it back on the table gently. “Second page,” he says. “For Wells’s paper.”

She grins, stuffing it back in her bag before standing. “Come on, Blake,” she chirps, primly. “We’ve got a club to run.”

Their next tournament is at Ark, their home ground, but Clarke’s worried the team will think that means they don’t have to practice.

So she starts making them meet four days a week, until it just becomes the new schedule. Bellamy doesn’t really think anyone minds—maybe Sterling, who’s trying to fit it around his cross country schedule, but mostly he just shows up when he can and practices on his own time, with Monroe. For most of them, the club is their only real after-school commitment.

Murphy still hasn’t shown up to practice, although Wells has assured Clarke he’ll be there for the actual event. Bellamy still isn’t really sure why Murphy cares, but. If it keeps the club running, he’s not about to complain.

Wells spends most afternoons with Raven and O, or in the back of the spare Algebra room, formatting the newspaper that doesn’t exist yet. Bellamy doesn’t know what he’s planning to do at the tournament, but he knows that at the last one, he gave a speech about some weird obscure plant found in Switzerland, and was out after round one.

“Wells doesn’t really like the limelight,” Clarke shrugged, when Bellamy asked about it.

She still drives him home—or to work—after practice, and it’s starting to become his favorite part of the day, which doesn’t even make sense. They hardly even talk, they just sit in silence or listen to whatever soundtrack she has going that day. But it feels—comfortable. And calm. He can just shut his mind off for fifteen minutes, and watch her concentrate too hard on staying in her lane, or slowing down for each yellow light. He _likes_ her weird, obsessive driving.

They walk in his living room to find Octavia and her friend—Atom, he’s pretty sure, which is a stupid name in general, but especially so for a nine year old girl—painting Raven and Wells’s toes electric blue and hot pink, respectively.

“That’s a good color on you,” Clarke says, completely genuine, and it’s unclear which one she’s speaking to.

“We can do yours and Bell’s next,” O offers, and he and Clarke exchange a look before shrugging.

“Sure.”

“So what’s going on with you and the princess?” Raven asks pointedly, finishing off her popsicle, which is turning her mouth a bright green.

Bellamy shrugs, wiggling his toes a little. The blue flashes back at him, not quite dry, and he’s afraid to move, in case he smudges them. Octavia worked hard on the flowers.

Clarke’s been staying later and later on the afternoons he doesn’t work. Tonight she stayed through dinner, which was a bunch of frozen fish sticks and some peas he found in a can. He’s not really sure _why_ she’s staying, but he’s not about to ask her to stop.

“Maybe she feels bad for me,” Bellamy muses, and Raven crows a little indignantly, before throwing one of O’s Ugly Dolls at his face. He made them for her himself, after she discovered the chain of weird, overpriced stuffed animals, and fell in love. They’re pretty good; made by a thirteen year old, so they’re not exactly evenly stitched, but. He worked with what he had.

“What does a sad ghost say?” Raven reads off her popsicle stick, and Bellamy shakes his head. “Boo hoo.” She makes a face, tossing the stick in the trash. “God, that’s awful.”

“The worst,” he agrees. “Pass me a grape one. The grape jokes are always the best.”

It’s not. _What is a snake’s favorite subject? Hssstory_. Raven throws the empty popsicle box at his face.

Clarke hasn’t stepped back into the old house since the tetanus incident—and then suddenly, on a very cold and windy Friday afternoon, she’s there.

Bellamy’s on his own again, both because the union cut out early, and because he took an extra shift, so he’s got both headphones in and is blasting Led Zeppelin so loud he can’t hear himself think.

Coincidentally, that also means he can’t hear Clarke calling his name from the bottom of the ladder.

Eventually, she just throws a chunk of drywall at him so he’ll look down.

“How do you keep getting in here?” he grumbles, stuffing the headphones in his back pocket. Clarke shrugs, grinning a little wickedly.

“Maybe I break in? I _am_ a delinquent, you know.”

“Yeah, but that was like, a Robin Hood crime,” he points out, climbing down. “For the Greater Good.”

When he reaches the ground he can see she’s changed out of what she wore to school that day. Now she’s in old, worn jeans with threadbare knees, and a pair of floral Doc Martens, with the thick soles, which makes him grin.

“You came prepared,” he notes, and she flushes.

“I _did_ mean to help last time,” she shrugs, glancing around the place. “So are you gonna give me the tour?”

Bellamy grins and waves an arm around the room. “Welcome to the illustrious kitchen.”

Clarke chokes on a laugh, eyeing the place. “ _Kitchen_?”

“Kitchen,” he confirms, pointing to a dark smudge bigger than all the other smudges. “That’s where the fridge was.”

“I can almost see it now,” she smirks, and he shoves her.

“This is the dining room,” he says, walking into the next space. “Where people dined.”

“On unsuspecting teenagers?” she asks, wrinkling her nose a little at the mouse droppings freckling the floor.

Bellamy grins. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the cannibal ghosts.”

“I’d probably be safer on my own,” she muses, and he squints over at her, while she’s clearly doing her best to not laugh.

“I take back everything nice I ever said about you,” he decides. “You’re kind of a dick.”

“It’s about time you realized,” Clarke says primly, grabbing hold of his grubby leather glove. “Come on, Blake. You’ve got a whole house to show me.”

So he does—he takes her upstairs, pointing out the holes in the floor where the homeowners had nailed in old tin can lids, and he tells her about the bay window they’re planning to install next week, before getting to work on the outlets.

“It’s gonna be a three-way outlet,” he explains, and Clarke grins a little.

“You should probably just assume I don’t understand any of your old-house jargon.”

Bellamy makes a face and fetches the plug from the work bench downstairs, to show her. “Okay, this is a three-way switch,” he says, laughing a little when she snatches it up to examine it. “Do you know what the advantage is to having a three-way switch, instead of a two-way switch?”

Clarke looks up at him, unimpressed. “You can switch it off three ways instead of two?”

He glares at her a little. “Cute. With a three-way switch, you can turn it on downstairs and turn it off upstairs. Can’t do that with a two-way switch.”

He tosses the switch back on the bench, and when he turns back, Clarke’s staring at him, like she’s trying to figure him out. He has to bite back the urge to fidget.

Finally, she says, careful, “You know a lot about this.”

She says it like a question, like the start of something else. Bellamy shrugs, awkward. Of course he knows a lot about it—it’s his job.

“They trained me pretty well. I had to sit through, like, fourteen seminars. They quizzed us after.”

It’s a cop-out, they both know it, and he isn’t even sure _why_ he’s so bad at taking compliments. Raven might be rubbing off on him a little.

“Is this what you want to do after school? Architecture?”

It’s an innocent enough question, and he knows she means well, but he can’t help the grimace. “God, I hope not.”

She seems more amused than anything. “What _do_ you want to do?”

The thing is, Bellamy’s mostly come to terms with what his future holds, and it’s pretty clear at this point that college just is not part of it. Indra certainly can’t afford it, and Aurora left him next to nothing when she died, and his grades aren’t anything spectacular. He might be able to apply for grants or loans or other financial aid, but he doesn’t really like the idea of being in debt until he’s thirty-five.

But, she asked him what he _wants_ to do.

“I dunno,” he scuffs the floor a little, and she levels a Look at him, that clearly says she isn’t biting. “I really like history,” he admits. “I wouldn’t mind doing something with that. Like, maybe teach.”

Clarke grins. “Raven was right,” she teases, reaching up to pat his cheek. “You _are_ a nerd.”

Then she proceeds to steal his hammer, and try her hand at prying off shiplap, which she of course fails at, because shiplap is the fucking _worst_ and has to be dealt with very carefully.

“Is this _kitty litter_?” she asks, outraged, as a bunch of it falls on her head, little granules catching on her hair and the wrinkles of her sweater.

Bellamy can’t help laughing and she glares at him, betrayed.

“C’mere,” he slides his gloves off, shoving them at her. “You’ll get splinters.”

“Now _you’ll_ get splinters,” she argues, but she slides the gloves on anyway, even though they swamp her tiny hands. She’ll need her own, if she actually plans on helping him again.

He really hopes she plans on helping him again. Not just because he appreciates the extra hands—if anything, she actually slows him down a little. But she makes things…brighter. In a way he’s found he’s gotten to, and doesn’t really mind.

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” he shrugs her off, trading her hammer out for a cat’s-paw. “I actually know what I’m doing.”

She huffs a little, but steps back to let him show her how it’s done.

He goes home with three splinters embedded in his palms. Octavia watches, mesmerized, while he soaks them in hot dishwater and then pries them out with a needle.

“Stop being creepy,” he huffs, but she just takes another picture with one of her many disposable cameras. She has a stockpile of morbid pictures hidden somewhere; photos of chicken pox and sunburns and papercuts. He’s not sure what she does with them all, but it probably has something to do with _The Blair Witch Project_ , which he caught her up late watching a couple nights ago.

Clarke doesn’t tell him about the party until the day before.

“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?” she nudges him with her foot, and he’s a little distracted because she’s wearing a pair of gold sandals—which, who wears _sandals_ in _October_? She’s going to get frostbite, or something—and must have gotten bored in class or something because there are vines with little grapes and flowers drawn in marker up both her feet.

“Uh, probably nothing?” he guess. Tomorrow’s Saturday, and that’s his usual go-to Saturday plan, when he’s not working, or being swallowed up by existential panic.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Clarke echoes, clearly shocked, and Bellamy frowns.

“Why, did we have plans? Oh god, is it a tournament?”

She’s outright staring now, like he’s just socked her in the stomach, and he can’t for the life of himself understand why. “Bellamy, it’s _Halloween_!”

“Oh,” he sighs, a little relieved. “Huh.”

Clarke scoffs, outraged. “ _Huh_? It’s the best night of the year! Aren’t you—I don’t know, taking Octavia trick or treating?”

He shrugs. “Honestly, I just forgot. O’s got a sleepover all weekend, so I thought I was just gonna get to lie in bed all day and play Runescape.”

“Mr. Social Butterfly,” she grins, and then grimaces. “I can’t believe you _forgot_.”

He shrugs again—he’s never seen the point in Halloween, really, not even when he was a kid. They lived in a pretty shitty neighborhood, so he and O weren’t allowed to go door-to-door, and the only candy they got was whatever the nurses had in their front desk bowl, when Aurora took them into work with her. Then they’d spend the night watching _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ on the TV in the employee’s lounge, until her shift was over.

“Ok, well, if Runescape won’t get jealous—my mom’s letting me have some friends over. You can stay the night, but the boys have to sleep in the den,” she rolls her eyes, but seems a little fond, in spite of herself.

“Who else is coming?” he asks, just to make sure it’s not him. Obviously, he knows it won’t be; Wells, at least, will be there, if no one else. But he’d still rather know.

“The whole team,” she shrugs, and he only feels a little disappointed, knowing he’s only invited because his name’s on the roster.

“Even Murphy?” he asks, to be an asshole.

Clarke scowls. “He’d be invited if he ever came to _practice_ ,” she grumbles, and he tugs her hair a little until she swats him away.

“I’ll see if I can make it,” he shrugs, and she rolls her eyes before standing, stretching her back like a cat. “Runescape’s pretty territorial.”

“It’s a wonder you get out at all,” she says, slinging her bag over one shoulder. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

He calls Raven early the next morning—which means she yells at him in Spanish, hangs up, and then calls back three hours later after she’s gotten enough sleep—and they drop O off at Atom’s house before heading to the Salvation Army.

“Why are you freaking out?” she asks dutifully, picking through the rack with the most neon lingerie sets she could find. “It’s just a party.”

“You say that like I go to a lot of parties.” He studies a cloak that might work as some sort of Dracula knock-off, before putting it back. “I don’t. You know that. I don’t go to any parties, ever. I don’t even know what you’re supposed to _do_ at parties.”

“Get drunk, watch _Fired Up!_ , make out in closets,” she ticks the list off on each finger, and then squints over at him. “What are you supposed to be?”

He’s wearing a top hat and the kind of scarf old women wear to church, and he’s holding a two dollar water color painting, with an interesting frame. “Dorian Gray,” he shrugs, feeling a little hopeless.

“Okay, no,” Raven says, disappearing into one of the clothing racks. He’s not sure he’ll ever see her, again.

While she’s gone, probably fighting some garage punk girl over a studded cone bra, Bellamy sifts through the accessory boxes, searching for anything that stands out.

That’s when he sees the gloves—small, and stiff cloth, like for gardening, and _floral_. They’re perfect for her.

He’s still holding them when Raven shows back up, with something red and shiny that she shoves at his chest. It’s a cape, barely big enough to fit around his shoulders. He’s not _really_ sure what the point of it is—he might be able to find a blue shirt and draw a red S on it, but it feels a little cheap.

“Romans wore capes,” Raven says, like it’s obvious, and eyes the gloves in his hand. “What, did you decide to be a middle-aged housewife, instead?”

“They’re for Clarke,” he says, because he’s an idiot. Raven’s brows shoot up so high he’s worried they might be lost forever. “She’s been helping me at the house,” he clarifies, but the eyebrows stay where they are. They might be stuck, permanently, and she’ll just have to live without eyebrows, like Whoopi Goldberg.

“She’ll like them,” she says, finally, with a one-shoulder shrug, like she hasn’t just spent the last five minutes staring him down over it. Then she waltzes off to the checkout line, parting the crowd with her cane, with what looks like a tasseled lampshade tucked under her other arm.

“I’m pretty sure Romans didn’t _just_ wear capes,” Bellamy says, as they’re leaving the store, and Raven rolls her eyes dramatically. She’s bought the lampshade, and sets it gingerly in the backseat, which is pretty laughable, since the backseat is stuffed with old Chemistry textbooks and gas station receipts and empty green Amp cans and what might be a lava lamp, but he’s not really sure. She’ll probably never find the lampshade, or anything else back there, again.

“That’s why we’re going to Wick’s,” she says, like he should have just _known_ that. “I’ll weld you armor or some shit.”

“The party’s at seven,” he points out, and she scoffs, as her car starts with a shudder.

“Don’t doubt me, Blake.”

Wick runs the local dump, on the edge of the town limits, and conveniently lives in one of those trailers that looks like a silver bullet, right on the property.

Bellamy doesn’t know if Raven’s taken him up on the job offer—she hasn’t mentioned it and he hasn’t asked. As far as he knows she still has that ebay account where she sells all her weird Frankenstein machinery creations, so she has money for gas and frozen pizza, so he’s not sure why she’d want a job, anyway. Jobs, just sort of generally, suck.

Wick strides out to greet them as soon as they pull up the pea gravel drive, with his oil-stained coveralls and scruffy grin on his face. Bellamy doesn’t _hate_ Wick, but he can’t really like him, on principle. He made Raven _cry_ , and that’s the sort of thing Bellamy probably won’t ever be able to completely forgive.

But he can be polite enough, especially if Wick’s giving them cool metal for his costume. _Picking battles_.

“There’s my favorite wrench monkey,” Wick grins, and Raven hits him with her cane.

“Shut up,” she barks, and he gives Bellamy one of those bro-hugs he’s never really mastered completely, because he has a very low number of bros. “We’re looking for sheet metal.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” he crows, slinging an arm each around their shoulders, and walking them into the lot.

The dump is, objectively, a lot cleaner than Bellamy always expects it to be. It doesn’t really smell like trash, just stale gasoline, and most of the garbage is just old chicken wire fence and junk cars that Wick tinkers on in the slow hours. There’s a pit in the middle of the lot, where people can dump things like broken refrigerators and old trunks they find in their attics, and Bellamy’s ninety-nine percent sure there’s a dead body down there, somewhere. O would be thrilled.

He mostly just pokes around at shit he probably shouldn’t touch, and gets rust all over his clothes by accident, while Raven and Wick search through the metal bin until she’s found two sheets deemed acceptable.

She ends up just drilling holes through the corners, and looping some chain from what used to be a dog leash through, to connect them over his shoulders and around his waist. Then she spray paints the whole thing a metallic gold, because she’s classy.

He ends up wearing a bedsheet toga under it, after looking up how to make one on WikiHow since neither he nor Raven actually know, and when he heads downstairs he finds her waiting on the couch, eating pickles straight from the jar.

“What are _you_ supposed to be?”

Raven shrugs, licking her fingers before capping the jar. “That sexy lamp from _Beauty and the Beast_ ,” she shrugs, and he frowns a little. She’s wearing a pair of torn fishnets, over those high-waisted black underwear, and the tiny bra-shirts that aren’t allowed at school. The lampshade’s perched on her head like a hat, and she’s stuck a lightbulb to the top of her cane with gorilla glue.

“The candlestick?”

“No,” she makes a face, heading out to the car. “The sexy one, you know. I think she’s French.”

“You mean the feather duster?”

“Whatever,” she shrugs, flicking the beaded tassels out of her eyes.

“Why are you carrying a lightbulb?” he wonders, and she smirks a little.

“In case I need a change.”

By the time they reach Clarke’s house—which Raven knows how to get to by heart, a fact he stores away for later—the sun’s already setting, leeching the sky in the purple-blue shade that comes before nighttime.

Clarke opens the door wearing a sweater that is both alarmingly huge and alarmingly orange. She has an orange skirt on underneath, but it’s being swallowed by the sweater. She’s wearing crisp knee socks and shiny Mary Janes, with a pair of oval glasses that make her eyes look twice as blue, perched on her nose.

“Hi!” she says, infectiously cheerful, and Bellamy grins hopelessly back. She eyes them both up and down a little before smirking. “Let me guess—Roman candle?”

Bellamy and Raven share an alarmed glance. There’s almost nothing worse than realizing you’ve accidentally worn a matching costume to a Halloween party.

“Uh, kind of,” he admits. “I’m a Roman, she’s a—sexy lamp, I guess.”

“Clearly,” Clarke agrees, and takes them each by the hand to lead them inside.

Murphy’s just inside the hallway, looming, which is his default setting. “I never liked lamps,” he says, sipping a Canada Dry. Raven tips the can up so he splutters.

“Good,” she snaps, marching down the hall, cane and heels clicking on the hardwood.

Clarke’s still got ahold of his hand, and when Bellamy glances down, it takes him a minute to realize she’s checking him out, neck going a blotchy pink.

He squeezes her fingers to get her attention, and she jumps a little, looking up. “You haven’t guessed my costume,” she accuses, and she actually sounds a little disappointed about it, which makes him grin.

“Let me guess,” he reaches out to poke her glasses up, where they’ve fallen down her nose. “You can’t see without your glasses.”

She beams up at him. “I thought the Greeks wore togas.”

Bellamy makes a face, leading her down the hallway, with no real goal in mind. He just wants to keep looking at her. “I took some artistic liberties,” he admits. “So, what do people do at these sorts of things?”

Clarke shrugs, steering them both towards the kitchen. “Wells and I set up a karaoke machine,” she offers. “My dad got it for me when I was eight, but Wells and I are the only ones who’ve ever used it. I don’t really—have a lot of friends,” she finishes with a sigh. For a minute she’d sounded like she was going to end it differently.

Bellamy lets go of her hand to swing his arm around her shoulders, and she ducks into his side. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” he teases, and she pokes him.

“Shut up—you literally just asked what people do at _parties_!”

“Yeah, and you still haven’t actually given me an answer, so…” he trails off, and they lock eyes for a heavy moment.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” she starts, warningly, and Bellamy nods.

“Karaoke contest,” he agrees. “What could go wrong?”

As it turns out, a lot can go wrong when nineteen—Dax is sick with the flu—teenagers get together with no supervision, for a karaoke contest. Especially when the alcohol gets involved.

“Where did you even _get_ this?” Clarke asks, louder than she probably means to, because apparently she cannot hold her liquor. Miller shrugs, and takes a sip from his own cup.

“Monty brought it.”

Clarke whirls around to search the crowd for Monty, and Bellamy isn’t sure if she’s planning to thank him, or give him a lecture on underage drinking, and liver cancer. In the end it doesn’t matter though, because she doesn’t find him, and soon enough it’s her turn and she forgets all about it.

She sings Kiss the Girl with Jasper, off the key, sounding more like a jazz lounge song than the Disney tune, and Bellamy decides she’s probably had enough—of booze _and_ karaoke.

He takes her by the elbow and leads out onto the wrap-around porch. It’s a little chilly, but she looks warm and flushed in her oversized sweater, and Bellamy’s grabbed an afghan off the couch.

Clarke perches on the porch swing, stuffing her hands under her thighs to keep them warm, and Bellamy tucks himself in beside her, spreading the blanket over their laps.

She leans her head on his shoulder. “I’m not good,” she says, a little sad, but mostly just resigned about it.

Bellamy glances down at her, amused. He’s had less to drink, and he ate more slices of the Hawaiian pizza than she did, so he’s only a little bit buzzed, head nice and blurry with it. “Good at what?”

She shakes her head, pressing her face into his arm and breathing warm against his skin. “Just— _good_.” She frowns, clearly trying to figure out a way to explain her thoughts, before they get lost in the drunken quicksand her mind has turned into. “I’m _nice_ ,” she says finally. “But I’m not—you think I’m _good_ , but I’m _not_. You think I’m,” she waves her hands a little, all over the place, wiggling her fingers like spider legs. “Togetherness,” she sighs. “But I’m not. I’m fucked up, Bell.”

Bellamy rubs a hand down her shoulder blades, soothing, because—how can she possibly think that? She’s the least fucked up person he knows.

“You are good,” he says, soft. “You’re awesome.”

 “I’m sorry,” she slurs, reaching up to rub her eyes, and accidentally knocking her glasses off until they hang off one ear. Bellamy takes them gently, putting them aside. “I can’t see,” she says, giving a sad smile, and she lets him tug her in.

But he’s still wearing his stupid fucking armor, so she winces a little, and he pushes her back so he can wiggle out of it, letting it drop to the floor.

“I’m just so—so _sad_ ,” she sighs, rubbing her cheeks on his chest until her make up smears on the bedsheet. “And I shouldn’t be, right? There are, there are worse things. People’ve got worse than me.”

“You can be sad,” he says, gruffer than he means to, but. He needs her to be okay. He doesn’t do well with people being upset in general, but _Clarke_ being upset—he really fucking needs her to be okay. “You’re allowed to be sad, Clarke. You’re allowed to feel whatever you want.”

“Hall’ween was my dad’s favorite holiday,” she says, pulling back so she can wipe at the dark smudges lining her cheeks. He raises a thumb to swipe at a dark spot she’s missed, and she leans her head into his palm. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she whispers, and he swallows.

“I’m really glad I’m here too.”

He’s not sure who leans in first, but suddenly they’re kissing, and it’s nothing like what he thought it’d be, but it still makes his head spin. Her face is still wet against his, and her mouth is warm. She tastes like orange juice and cheap vodka, and a little bit like the pizza sauce, and they’re both slow to pull apart.

She grins up at him, smile lazy, eyes squinty from the alcohol. “ _Jinkies_ ,” she giggles, and then lays her head down in his lap. He combs a hand through her curls until her breathing starts to even out.

Bellamy’s not sure when he closed his eyes, but he wakes up sometime before dawn with a crick in his neck from the awkward position, and Clarke drooling a little on his thigh. He’s sober enough, so he half-carries her in and tucks her into the couch between Maya and Harper, and then he scrapes Raven up off the living room floor, where she’s curled up with her head on Wells’s stomach, and her bad leg elevated up on Jasper’s hip while he sleeps.

He drives them home in Raven’s car—carefully and on the edge of his seat the whole time, sure it’d break down around them, any minute—so he can sleep in his own bed and not overthink the night before.

They were drunk, and they kissed, and he should probably regret it. She was feeling sad, and vulnerable about her dad, and she was _drunk_ , but. He can’t, not really. He liked it too much.

He’s not sure if she’ll even remember, and he’s not sure if he wants her to.

He really just needs to be unconscious for the next several hours, to recuperate. From the passenger seat, Raven grunts a little every few minutes, just to let him know she’s not happy about the early morning’s development.

Bellamy barely manages to untie the bedsheet before he collapses in bed. He forgot his armor at Clarke’s, he realizes muzzily, and his last thought is whether or not she might keep it.

He wakes around noon, when Octavia comes crashing in through the screen door, and comes running up the stairs to show him her Wednesday Adams costume, before she changes. He admires it the appropriate amount, and when she leaves he looks over to find his phone flashing with a text from Clarke.

_Sorry for crying and drooling on you last night._

He stresses over it for most of the afternoon, before just sending _Any time_ , and hoping for the best.

The three little dots show up almost instantly, and then a tiny gray box that indicates an emoji, which he’ll never see.

But then she texts _Oh right, sorry. : )_ so at least he won’t have anything else to obsess over all night.

Neither of them mention the kiss, and when he gets to school on Monday, she’s there waiting for him, with her signature cup of hot coffee.

“Is this going to become a habit?” He blows on the drink, to make it cool faster. Clarke shrugs and grins up at him.

“I’m pretty sure it already has.”

The second tournament doesn’t so much sneak up on them, as suddenly happen. One moment he’s waking, bleary-eyed with crust in his lashes at six AM, shambling his way to the school—and the next, the judges are listing the winners as the sun sets outside.

“Home nights are always a piece of cake,” Clarke chirps, sticking her feet in his lap. Her trophy’s sitting, shiny and self-important on the cafeteria table.

“Then how come you had us train so much?” he asks, accusing, and she grins, sliding a slice of chocolate marbled cheesecake over to him. One of the parents of the opposing, farm town team brought it in, and he’s almost willing to transfer schools, if it’ll mean he can get the recipe.

“It builds character,” she shrugs, and he swipes her feet down in disgust while she cackles.

Miller was born at the tail end of November, which means every now and then, his birthday falls on Thanksgiving—which in turn means he usually has a party over Thanksgiving Break weekend, and since he’s sort-of-kind-of dating Monty, there is _always_ a lot of weird, imported booze that’s probably illegal.

Bellamy’s making canned pumpkin pie in the kitchen, because it’s O’s favorite, and because he likes to eat the leftover filling straight from the can, and he’s wearing his church shirt because he’d invited Clarke over for dinner, when she shows up three hours early.

She’s wearing a dress that’s entirely too fancy for his shitty house, and her hair’s up in one of those complicated hairstyles from the hair salon magazines. She just walks in, as per usual, and finds him in the kitchen, where he stands staring like an idiot with pumpkin pie filling on his hands, for a very inadvisable amount of time.

“Uh—hi,” he starts, bewildered, and she blanches a little.

“Shit, sorry, you’re busy,” she eyes the pie, and he flushes, embarrassed. It’s canned filling and a frozen pie crust from the 7/11 freezer section—not exactly Martha Stewart, no matter _how_ much Home Ec he’s done.

“No, I’m really not,” he promises, and goes to rinse his hands at the sink, before sticking the pie in the oven. It sort of looks like a pumpkin threw up in a pie crust, but. It smells pretty good, and that’s what counts.

“I just came to say I’m sorry but I can’t make it to dinner,” she explains in a rush, and she does look very sorry about it.

“Oh,” he says, trying his best not to seem too disappointed. Clearly something’s come up; he’s not going to be a dick about it. “Hot date instead?” he teases, and she makes a face.

“Benefit for my mom,” she sighs. “It’s at some fancy tech school. Anyway—I just wanted to, I don’t know. Tell you in person.” She looks a little awkward, worrying her lip, and he doesn’t really _mean_ to say it, but obviously his mouth has taken a vacation from being connected to his brain.

“Do you need a date?” He clears his throat a little, but it’s not like he can go _back_. “I rock a pretty mean suit, you know.”

But Clarke _winces_ , which seems like the opposite of a good sign. “It’s probably best if you don’t,” she says, careful, apologetic. But it still feels like he got kicked in the shin.

“Okay,” he shrugs, pointedly nonchalant about it. “I was gonna go to Miller’s birthday party tonight.”

Clarke grins a little. “Wow, two parties in one month? Careful—someone might think you’re getting a social life.”

“I’m in high demand,” he agrees. “Have fun at your thing. I’ll see you at school.”

“Yeah,” she says lamely, grin stuttering a little. “See you.” Then she turns and marches out the way she came in.

Octavia bounds down the stairs within moments. “What did Clarke want?” she asks, like she _hadn’t_ been listening in the whole time. Bellamy flicks cold water at her face.

“None of your beeswax. Now get that gross gel stuff out—we’re gonna make these gingerbread men into dead bodies.”

“ _Awesome_.”

Miller’s party is later that night, up at his older brother’s summer hunting cabin, which doesn’t get wifi, but which is set off to the side enough that none of the neighbors will call the cops if they get too loud.

He catches a ride with Dax, who he doesn’t know _too_ well, but he has his number from the Forensics Club, and Raven wasn’t picking up.

The first person he sees when they pull up is Murphy, which just seems like some sort of omen.

Murphy and Miller were in the same JROTC class their freshman year, which is apparently the sort of thing that bonds people for life. Miller’s still in JROTC, and Murphy quit early on, but they still maintain some sort of wordless friendship—the kind where Murphy lets Miller copy his Algebra notes, and Miller invites Murphy to social gatherings that involve weird gin.

Murphy’s sipping from a flask when he sizes Bellamy up. “Where’s your girl?”

He shrugs. “She had a family thing.”

Murphy nods a little and then asks “Where’s the lamp?”

“Beats me.” Raven’s absence is making him a little bit nervous, since she _never_ misses out on free booze, but there are any number of things she could have gotten sidetracked by, and most of them involve wires.

The moment stretches silently, and so Bellamy takes his chance, heading into the cabin to find Miller, and one of those beers with the skull label that Monty brought last year.

He finds Miller first. “Hey, you talked to Reyes lately?”

Miller nods, a little awkward because Monty is clinging to his neck like a baby koala. “She said she had a thing,” he says, shouting to be heard over the Limp Bizkit song some white guy with dreadlocks hooked up to the amp.

Bellamy frowns. When it comes to Raven, the word _thing_ has an incredibly varied definition. “She say what kind of thing?”

“Nah, man. Sorry.”

Bellamy waves a hand, spotting the beer stacked neatly on a nearby bookshelf, between extra rifle rounds, and a ceramic lamp shaped like a jaguar. “S’okay. Happy birthday.”

Bellamy never realized he actually _doesn’t_ know what to do at parties, until he’s alone, at this one. He recognizes everybody, in that vague peripheral way—that one’s in his weight lifting class, that one works at the town grocery store, that one plays piano for the school plays—but he doesn’t actually _know_ them.

Which is how he finds himself back outside with _Murphy_ , of all people, hunched over on the cold stone stoop.

“Where’s the prince?” Murphy asks him, and Bellamy frowns.

“Who?”

Murphy shrugs, tipping his bottle back, chugging the dregs at the bottom, before chucking the glass towards the trees. There’s a soft thud but no crash, and he looks pretty disappointed. “He’s just so _pretty_ ,” he sneers, and Bellamy’s having a little trouble following. “He’s got that fucking smile, and those fucking _arms_ —”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Jaha,” Murphy says, like it’s obvious. “Who else?”

Bellamy sits quietly, processing this new information. He feels like he should be more surprised than he is, but mostly it just feels like a puzzle putting itself together inside his brain.

He may have had too much of Monty’s imported beer. He can’t really feel his tongue, anymore.

He’s drunk more than he would have, if he hadn’t seen Clarke in that dress, if she hadn’t been so quick to turn him down. If she hadn’t been so _careful_ about it, like she was worried she might break him.

Like she felt _sorry_ for him.

He’s starting to think he understands what Raven meant.

He takes another long drag from his own bottle, and then says “Love,” because he’s pretty sure Murphy can understand the sentiment.

Murphy snorts. “Fuck love,” he spits.

“No,” Bellamy says, reaching a hand out. It lands on Murphy’s hair, and he pets it a little. He can’t really tell if Murphy minds, so he keeps going. “No, love’s _awesome_ ,” he argues, and then makes a face, because that’s not quite right. “I mean, it sucks sometimes, but. Mostly it’s great.”

“Fuck you too,” Murphy says, not missing a beat, and then swipes the last of Bellamy’s beer, downs it, and tosses the bottle at the trees with his own.

He wobbles up, shakily, stumbling until he remembers how gravity works. “I’m gonna go find him,” he decides, and glances down at Bellamy with narrowed eyes. But he’s starting to think that might just be his natural expression, and not a sign of hate and distrust.

“You should talk to your girl,” he adds, nods once like he’s agreeing with his own suggestion, and then stumbles off towards the forest.

The thing is, Bellamy is drunk enough to realize it’s a bad idea, even as he takes out his phone and dials Clarke’s number. But he’s not sober enough to actually _stop_ , so he’s just thinking _this is a terrible idea_ over and over as he listens to it ring.

He gets her voicemail, and he’s not sure if that makes him lucky, or not.

Probably not, because now she’s not there to cut him off when he starts rambling.

“Princess,” he says, and he knows he _has_ to be slurring, but he can’t actually tell. His tongue feels like it’s not attached to the rest of his body, just a limp wet thing hanging out in his mouth.

“I like you,” he continues. “I like you— _fuck_ , a lot. And I—listen, you’re awesome. You’re good, and awesome, and you smell like fucking, I don’t even know. Fruit. And happiness. You’re, Clarke, you’re happiness. You’re so, _fuck_ , I can’t even say it. I don’t know the word. You’re like—if I was a puzzle, and you were a puzzle, and suddenly we just _fit_ , like we didn’t even know we were missing, but then there we are. We’re like that. Or, we can be. I want to be. I shouldn’t have made that stupid rule. I’m so—”

An automated voice rings shrilly in his ear, letting him know he’s out of minutes. He lets his phone drop to the grass, and lays down to make his head stop spinning. Or maybe it’s the world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s suddenly very sure that sometime, possibly soon, he’s going to ask her out on a date, a real one, and there’s a good chance she’ll say yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise i'm not abandoning this story. and even if i do, kristen now knows where i live, so she can hunt me down and make me, if she needs to.

Bellamy isn’t sure where he expects to wake up, but it’s not at Raven’s house.

He’s been there a few times, so he recognizes the flaky wallpaper—a 1960’s-era floral pattern—and fake wood paneling. But he specifically remembers falling asleep outside Miller’s brother’s cabin.

He’s nestled in a bunch of old blankets that smell sort of like whiskey, sort of like mold, on her bedroom floor. The carpet is scratchy and stained, but not terrible, and his head hurts too much to really care about any of that. He tries to poke through his memories, to find the one where Raven collected him last night and drove them to her house, but the last thing he remembers is the feeling of wet grass under his head, and the voicemail.

 _The voicemail_ —he left a drunken voicemail for Clarke, where he said they were like _puzzles_. He’s pretty sure. There might have been some other stuff too, about feelings in general, but the puzzles analogy sticks with him purely because it sounds so _stupid_ now that he’s sober.

He groans a little, can’t really help it, and Raven pokes her head in the room. She looks sort of pissed, but that’s not unusual. _Sort of pissed_ is Raven’s default expression.

“You are such a fucking dumbass,” she grumbles, tossing something at his face. Upon closer inspection, he finds it’s his jacket, the old leather one he was wearing last night.

And then, because he’s predictable, the first thing he does is take out his phone. The battery’s dead. Raven clicks her tongue, unimpressed, from the doorway.

“How’d I get here?” he asks, muffled by the thickest blanket. It’s that teal color popular in the 90’s, with corgis wearing hats.

“Clarke and I picked you up,” she shrugs, coming over to sit on her bed, one of those army-style cots from the hunting store. “She got your message, by the way. She was worried, thought you might be dead in a ditch. I told her you were just an idiot who never buys more minutes.”

“Fuck,” Bellamy sighs, burying his face in with the teal corgis. They don’t help as much as they should. “Fuck,” he says again, just so the world really gets the message. “Where is she now?”

Raven shrugs, picking at a loose thread in her denim. “She just left. I told her you’d just hide out in here all day if you knew she was outside, because you’re a pansy.”

She’s right, obviously, he definitely would have. But he studies her for a minute, because—“You brought her here?”

Raven glares down at him. “Well I didn’t have my car, and I didn’t think Indra would appreciate us breaking in with her unconscious nephew on our backs. Clarke wanted to take you to her mom, because she thought you had alcohol poisoning, but I figured you’d just rather die.”

She tosses him a half-full bottle of yellow Gatorade—from where, he’s not sure—and he takes a sip, realizing his throat is so dry it’s throbbing. “Thanks,” he coughs a little, and she makes a face.

“Don’t ruin my blankets with your boy germs,” she orders, and he raises a brow, looking around her mess of a bedroom, pointedly.

The thing is, it _is_ a mess, filled with empty soda bottle and water bottles filled with liquid that is decidedly _not_ water, and vodka bottles with the last bits of alcohol turning to sludge at the bottoms. There are chip bags crumpled up everywhere, and some kinder egg wrappers melted into the rug, from when Raven spent like twenty dollars buying a bunch online, even though they’re illegal.

“Toddlers ruin everything,” she’d said hotly, when he asked why she even cared. “We can’t let them win.”

But, that’s all there is. Empty junk food wrappers and a few clothes that she forgot to take to his place, tossed on the floor, and the cot.

“What happened to your furniture?” he asks, careful. He used to come over a lot when they were fourteen, and he remembers she had some old bedroom set—matching dresser, desk, and end tables, that were made out of plywood and painted light blue. She’d stuck a bunch of holographic stickers all over them—Disney from when she was younger, and then Monster and Amp Energy ones on top. Some of the dresser drawers were missing their knobs, so she’d tied a bunch of shoelaces through the holes.

“I’m going minimalist,” Raven says, wry, even though they both know she’s lying. She’d loved that dumb old dresser. She had a list of all her favorite astronauts written on the side.

“Cool,” he says, sitting up and rubbing the crust from his eyes. They’re sore, and dry, and probably bloodshot. He can’t remember how much he drank last night, which probably means it was too much. “You need a sense of style.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Raven tosses one of the old foil bags at his face. He’s not sure how long it’s been on her floor. Possibly forever.

Bellamy yawns, shuffling down the hall towards the bathroom, hoping they’re alone. There’s always a pretty good chance that Nygel’s got a _friend_ over, or a group of them, which means he and Raven have to stay out of sight. He knows Raven hates it, that he and O can’t even come over, anymore. He knows she hates not feeling safe in her own house.

The bathroom’s empty, which he takes to be a good sign, but locks the door just in case, before washing his face in the sink. Everything’s got a pretty thick layer of grime coated over it, with soap sludge and other mystery gunk—except something black and silky, hanging from the doorknob.

It’s a dress, fancier than anything Raven’s ever owned—even her high-definition electronics are hand-me-downs, rewired by her own hand. But this dress looks like something they’d sell at Macy’s, for fifty dollars a pop.

“Hey, where were you last night, anyway?” he asks, when he steps back in her room. She’s still sprawled out on the cot, bad leg elevated by sheer force of will, cane nowhere to be found, as usual. It’s a miracle she hasn’t lost the thing.

She’s reading some trash-news magazine, the kind with newspaper pages and headlines like _Is Lindsey Lohan Dating A Baby_ on the front cover. “I had a thing,” she says, vague and noncommittal, and that’s really what convinces him.

Clarke isn’t waiting for him outside the next day, but that’s fine. He finds her in the studio art room in the basement, which Wells has sort of commandeered in the off-hours, to work on the school paper that doesn’t exist.

“You took Raven as your date,” he says, and she jumps, whirling around where she’s sitting cross-legged on one of the tables. Her sketchbook’s on her lap, and she shuts it before he can see much besides a few inky black lines and half of a face. “To your mom’s benefit.”

She goes a little pink, embarrassed. “It wasn’t, like, a date-date,” she assures him, because of course that’s what she’s worried he thinks. That she’s cheating on her fake boyfriend.

 _It wouldn’t really be cheating_ , he realizes with a jolt. _She’s not obligated to not date anyone else. You’re technically not really dating, anyway._

“I just—it was a science school, you know? There were a lot of science people there. I thought maybe she should meet some of them.” She worries her lip a little, looking guilty. “I would have invited you first,” she says. “But I thought you didn’t like parties. I thought you’d just say yes to be nice.”

“I probably would have,” he admits, sliding on the desk beside her. He moves slow, careful, but—there’s that feeling in his gut again, when she moves over for him, but not very far, so their thighs still touch. “But that’s what fake boyfriends are for.”

Clarke grins up at him. “And fake girlfriends are supposed to make sure you don’t sleep all night in the woods,” she teases.

“Hey, I was perfectly fine there. It was like camping, but without the tent.” He folds his hand in hers, resting on her sketchbook. “Thanks for looking out for her,” he adds, quiet, and she squeezes his hand.

He’s suddenly very sure that sometime, possibly soon, he’s going to ask her out on a date, a real one, and there’s a good chance she’ll say yes.

But she’s not ready, and he doesn’t have to be a genius to tell. She’s got her own shit, just like everyone else, and if he pushes her too fast, it’ll ruin everything.

That’s okay though. It’s not like he’s in a rush, or anything. He’s got his own shit, too.

“I think the others might be right,” he admits. “We really are the mom and dad.” The team’s been calling them that lately, snarky and with a roll of their eyes when they tell them to _practice, practice, practice!_ At first, he’d thought it was just because he and Clarke are “dating,” and that it might scare her off.

But now he’s pretty sure it’s just because they fill those roles, at least a little. They might be a mess, but they’re tidier than others.

“Of course we are,” she grins, leaning into him. “We’re puzzles.”

He falls into the seat beside Wells with a grin, which Raven clearly thinks is suspicious. He can’t really blame her; he spent most of yesterday moping in her weird, musty dog blankets, and now he’s got a stupid smile he just can’t seem to shake.

“Who the fuck lit your Bunsen?” she demands.

“Clarke,” he shrugs, grinning wider when she rolls her eyes outrageously.

“I’ll be so glad when this stupid bet is done with and you two can date like _normal_ people,” she huffs, turning back to her monitor. He has to fight the urge to say something ridiculously sappy, like _You might not have to wait that long_. It seems like a bad idea, to say it out loud. He doesn’t want to jinx it.

Bellamy turns to Wells, who’s messing around with Robert15.png, giving him what might be wings, or stumpy hands poking out of his shoulder blades. “You talk to Murphy lately?”

Wells eyes him a little, clearly amused. “Yeah.”

“What’d you say?” It might be a little nosy, but—Wells can tell him to fuck off, if he wants. He’ll listen.

“That a sexuality crisis isn’t a very good reason for being a dick,” he shrugs, and Bellamy snorts a little. “And that I accept him, of course, but I don’t feel the same way. I think he took it well.”

“Did he punch anything?”

“Surprisingly, no. He did swear at one of the freshmen, but I think it was unrelated.”

“What a prick,” Raven snaps, and Bellamy glances over to find her scowling at her virtual McMansion, where she’s installing a virtual in-ground pool. “What, he thinks having a _crush_ makes it okay to terrorize people?”

Bellamy doesn’t really know many details about the blood feud between Raven and Murphy. She told him that it started when they were in second grade, out on the elementary school playground, but she wouldn’t tell him why. He has trouble picturing either of them as little kids, angry and battling it out by the jungle gym. He imagines Raven as a tiny bookie, hedging bets out of a plastic Little Tykes clubhouse, while Murphy chalky hubble bubble gum for twice the retail price.

They’re basically the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s, but with less actual murder.

Wells just shrugs, apparently above such things. He seems more invested in his series of horrifying Robert’s, than in holding a grudge over a bloody nose.

The Forensics Club is starting to become more like a book club, where everyone just sort of sits around in a circle and reads some of their favorite poems out loud, in between a bunch of small talk about absolutely nothing.

Jasper and Monty have started a video blog, which usually just means they go around, asking everyone some sort of broad question, like _that dead puppy in 101 Dalmatians, or those squeaky shoes in The Aristocats?_ and then film the answers, cutting them into a montage with weird Star Wars fight music in the background. It’s becoming pretty popular, just because it’s so bizarre.

O’s Head Start afterschool program ends in the first week of December, which means that when Raven’s on a Biology field trip to the aquarium on a Friday, he has to find a new ride to pick her up.

“Hey,” he leans his head on Clarke’s shoulder from behind, and she reaches up to pat his head absently, her eyes still locked on _The Canterbury Tales_. “I, uh, need a ride.”

Clarke frowns a little, turning to look at him. “The meeting starts in five minutes.”

“I know,” he says, a little embarrassed. “But I have to go pick up O, and Raven’s usually my ride.”

Clarke makes a noise of understanding deep in her throat, and then tugs him out after her, before writing a quick _We’ll be back in 20 mins start practicing without us!_ post-it note and sticking it to the door.

“You could’ve just said something,” she teases, as they race to her car. He’d put off asking, and now they only have seven minutes to get to the elementary school, before O’s very pregnant and irritable teacher decides to give them a lecture on punctuality—he’s not sure how she’s always the exact same shade of pregnant, every time he sees her, but. He assumes witchcraft.

He’s gotten the lecture four times, now. He basically has it memorized. There are a lot of _literally_ ’s thrown in, that set his teeth on edge.

The inside of Clarke’s BMW smells like pine, and she’s hung a sprig of mistletoe on the mirror with the new air freshener. Her nails are painted a shiny red, with little gold stars on the tips like very pointy freckles. He should have _known_ she’d be a Christmas fanatic. She probably has carols all cued up in the CD player, and everything.

Sure enough, when she turns the key, Bing Crosby’s voice starts to lilt through the air, talking about white Christmases and other winter things, even though the most they’re likely to get this year is a very thick frost.

“Are you like this with every holiday?” he asks, and she grins.

“Not Christopher Columbus Day,” she chirps. “Fuck Columbus.”

Bellamy snorts a little, as she does the exact school zone speed limit, for the entire drive. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Fuck Columbus.”

They’re only three minutes late. They still get the lecture.

Octavia makes a face when the engine turns and Bing starts up again, and Clarke laughs, reaching for the dial.

“You don’t have to,” Bellamy says, catching her hand. “She’s a spoiled brat as it is.”

Octavia flicks the back of his head, which just proves his point, really.

“It’s fine,” Clarke shrugs. “It’s a mix CD, anyway.” She flicks the dial forward a few times, until she finds the one she wants, and Hilary Duff’s voice starts to fill the air.

“Who is this?” O asks, nose scrunching a little, but not like she hates the music. She just doesn’t recognize it.

Clarke throws a hand to her heart in mock-distress. “Haven’t you seen _Lizzie McGuire_?”

Bellamy eyes her a little, amused. “That’s a little before her time, princess.”

She shoots him a glare. “Lizzie McGuire is _timeless_ , Bellamy.”

“Who’s Lizzie McGuire?” Octavia asks, clearly a little annoyed at being left out.

“That’s it,” Clarke decides. “After today’s practice, I am educating you.”

“I have to work today,” Bellamy reminds her, and she rolls her eyes.

“Luckily for us, you aren’t necessary to enjoy the magic of _Lizzie McGuire_.”

From the backseat, Octavia crows _ooh, burn!_ and Clarke reaches back for a high five. Bellamy pointedly ignores them.

Everyone fawns over Octavia, of course. Most of them are only children, like Clarke and Raven, who don’t understand that siblings are equally awesome and annoying. Bellamy means to have O sit in the back and work on her homework or something, but clearly she prefers perching up on the front desk, and letting everyone tell her how pretty her little braids are, and ask about the snowflakes she’s painted on her nails with Q tips—even though to Bellamy they just look like white blobs—and tell her how clever she is, for reading a _sixth_ grade level book, which she likes to show off.

“She’s supposed to be doing homework,” he grumbles. “She’s probably got a ton of math, because she always puts that off till the last second.”

Clarke pats his head, which is only a little bit comforting. “You’re just jealous because you’re not our favorite Blake anymore.”

“Because I don’t have a million Tamagachi’s?” He glares over at his sister, who is now delightedly showing everyone her latest virtual pet, who she’s named Hamster, even though it is clearly not a hamster at all.

“Oh yeah,” Clarke agrees, flashing him a smile. “Definitely the Tamagachi’s.”

He comes home to find Clarke and Octavia passed out on the couch, eating O’s leftover Halloween candy. Her nails are painted a weird hybrid of pink and purple, and she’s wearing some shimmery eyeshadow that looks like the inside of a shell. Clarke’s hair is up in a million messy braids, with some of the ends sticky with O’s nail polish. There’s an empty box of gas station variety doughnuts on the floor, staining the carpet with powdered sugar.

 _The Lizzie McGuire Movie_ DVD menu is playing on a loop, on the TV. He’s not sure where Clarke got it, since she doesn’t even have a TV at her house.

He touches her shoulder, quietly, so Octavia doesn’t hear. Clarke wakes softly—soft little stirs, soft little whimpers, soft twitching behind her eyes. And then she snorts a little, which kind of ruins it.

“What time is it?” she asks, groggy, and he grins.

“It’s like, not even seven. You’re such a grandma.”

“Shut up, I stayed up all night reading fucking Nathaniel Hawthorne,” she says, making a face, and trying to pet down the hopeless tangles her braids have become.

“Hey, what’s wrong with Nathaniel Hawthorne?” He really only says it to see the glare he knows she’ll give, and she doesn’t disappoint.

“It’s _Nathaniel Hawthorne_.” She worries her lip a little, and he tries very hard not to stare at the sliver of pale skin from where her shirt has ridden up over her stomach. “I don’t really sleep a whole lot, to be honest.”

Bellamy frowns a little. “You’ve fallen asleep on me _twice_ ,” he points out, and she grins, soft.

“You’re comfortable,” she shrugs, standing up from the couch. He tries not to read too much into that—she’s clearly still a little tired, and her voice is all scratchy from sleep. He’s trying not to read too much into a lot, with Clarke.

She stretches her back a little, and Bellamy tugs the throw blanket more firmly over O’s shoulders, and tries to wedge one of Indra’s dumb cat pillows—they don’t even _have_ cats—under her head.

When he straightens up again, Clarke’s watching him, soft smile still on her face. He clears his throat a little. “Thanks for, uh,” he nods down at his sister, who huffs in her sleep. “I think she’s convinced she has to hate the color pink or something, to bust stereotypes. I can’t remember the last time she’s worn it. She’s more Wednesday Adams, than Hilary Duff.”

“Wednesday Adams is awesome,” Clarke shrugs. “She can like both.”

Bellamy walks her out to her car—because it’s polite, and because he wants to drag their time out a little. She has _The Lizzie McGuire Movie_ tucked under her arm, in one of those thick white plastic cases, popular in the early 2000’s. Around the time her dad would’ve died.

“Thanks again,” he says, leaning on her door, caging her in on the other side.

“Bellamy,” she sighs, but she sounds a little fond about it. “It’s literally no problem. I like Lizzie McGuire. I like your sister. _And_ her Tamagachi’s,” she smirks, and he tries to laugh, but he’d sort of thought she was going to say _I like you_.

“Feel free to come pass out on my couch whenever,” he grins, and she leans up to kiss the spot where his cheek turns into his jaw—which he’s come to think of as _her_ spot, because he’s pretty sure no one else has ever touched the skin there.

“Bye, Bellamy,” she says, and drives off, and he stares after, shivering a little because he forgot his jacket inside.

Raven shows up just in time for dinner, because she’s a leech, and the three of them make some haphazard tacos out of the package of hard shells he found in the pantry, and as many ingredients as he could find in the fridge.

“So, I heard you got to spend all day with the princess,” she teases, bits of the shredded iceberg lettuce spilling to land on her boobs.

“Yeah, and I hope you know I blame you,” he snaps, petulant, and flicks a bunch of cheese, grown soggy from the fridge, at her face.

Raven dodges it expertly, grinning smugly the whole time. “You better,” she agrees. “I claim full responsibility, which means your first newborn gets named after me.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he says wryly, but she just shrugs.

“Take it up with the universe, Blake—I don’t make the rules.”

After that, Raven starts disappearing whenever Clarke shows up—making excuses about having to _read at the library, it’s just a better environment for reading_ , or _Nygel asked me to start stopping by so she knows I still exist_ , or _Wick needs that air pump valve I promised him_ , each shittier and less believable than the last. She’s clearly trying to wingman him, and it’d be cute, if he wasn’t worried she was feeling left out. He’s still pretty sure her only real friends are him and Clarke—maybe Wells, if she’d let him—and he doesn’t like the idea of her spending her afternoons alone and lonely, just because she thinks it’ll get him laid or something.

When he brings it up, she, predictably, goes off on him. “I’m not some friendless, helpless _invalid_ ,” she snaps, even though he’d called her none of those things— _friendless_ he’d maybe inferred a little, but. “You’re not the only person in the world who cares about me, Blake,” she snaps, and it’d hurt worse if she actually seemed to believe it.

But the next day when he gets home, instead of saying something about fixing up someone’s hot water heater for thirty bucks and leaving, he finds Raven helping Clarke and O tape a bunch of cut-out paper snowflakes around the living room. There’s _glitter_ , which he’d thought Raven and O were genuinely allergic to, or something. There’s tinsel strung up above the door.

“What is this?” he asks, flicking the end of a giant red ribbon that’s stuck to what he’s pretty sure was once an Easter Bunny statuette, but has been painted red, with a cotton ball beard taped onto it.

“It’s Christmas Spirit,” Clarke crows, flinging the tail of her very long Santa Hat out of her face. It’s pink crushed velvet, with _Princess_ in fancy script along the trim. “ _Obviously_.”

“Yeah, Bellamy, get your head out of your ass,” Raven adds, from her perch on the easy chair, where she’s directing O on hanging the mistletoe. She’s short, even standing on the dining room chair, so it’s just taped halfway up the wall, like she gave up on trying to reach the ceiling.

“Oh, obviously,” he agrees, helping Octavia hop off the chair. “How could I miss that?”

Clarke bends over from her spot on Indra’s ancient step ladder, and slaps one of the smaller, less glittery snowflakes to his cheek. There’s still a lot of glitter though, and he coughs when he breathes it in.

“There,” she says, smiling as she brushes some of the flecks off his nose. “Perfect.”

She goes nuts in the spare Algebra room, too, until it looks like the inside of a snow globe vomited up on the walls. There are those scratchy, tin foil garlands in metallic gold and silver, from the Dollar Store, strung up from every surface. Little doodles of mistletoe in every corner of the white board. Those giant red velvet ribbons, though decidedly less giant versions of them, tacked to the back of every chair. Bellamy’s not really sure how Clarke managed to get permission from the spare Algebra teacher for all of it. There’s enough Christmas Spirit in the room to last a lifetime. He’s sure if they just seal off all the exits, the whole place will start snowing magically, on its own. Magic snow that never melts or causes hypothermia, just looks nice and lands in soft flurries on the speckled floor.

“Do you actually _work_ for Santa Claus?” he asks, tugging on the end of her pink hat. She’s worn it every day this week now, and he’s beginning to think it might last the whole month. “Are you an elf? You’re short enough.”

Clarke swats his hand away. “Of course you’re a Grinch,” she sighs, making a face. “I should’ve known.” But when he just shrugs, she eyes him a little more seriously. “Is this about your mom?”

Bellamy scuffs his shoe along the floor, leaving a trail of shimmery glitter, like he has been for the past few days. It’s still awkward, even years later, talking about Aurora. He’s never really sure what to say. “Every holiday’s pretty hard, now, but—I don’t know. She got sick around Christmas, so it’s just. Especially bad, I guess.”

She nods, and he waits for the inevitable speech, taken off a pamphlet in some psychiatrist’s office, or a motivational poster in a dentist’s hall—but instead she just slips her hand into his without a word, and leans against his arm a little.

Surprisingly, it helps. Even if her fingers are constantly cold; at least warming them up keeps his mind preoccupied.

He’s barely sat down in Accounting, when Monty corners him—which is pretty funny to watch, seeing as they’re both in rolling computer chairs.

“You have to tell Clarke about the bet,” he says, deadly serious, and even maybe a little mad. Definitely stern, at the very least, while Jasper lurks around in the background, pretending he’s not filming them for his vlog.

“What,” Bellamy says, not because he doesn’t understand, but because it’s his go-to response when someone surprises him.

Monty stares him down. Or tries to, at least, but it’s _Monty_ , so he’s pretty bad at it. He looks like he doesn’t know whether or not to yell at Bellamy, or hold him and tell him _everything’s okay_. “You have to tell her,” he says, “Or at least break up with her. It’s not right, stringing her along like this.”

At this point, Bellamy’s having a hard time not just cracking up, because— _he forgot they didn’t know_. Most of the time, it just feels familiar, hanging out with Clarke and walking her to class, even holding hands, and letting her kiss his cheek—it just feels like another thing that’s between them, something they _do_. He sort of forgets, really, that all of it is for the bet.

Except, he’s pretty sure, not _all_ of it is. But they still haven’t talked about it.

“I did,” he says, shrugging, while Monty’s jaw literally drops. It’s pretty gratifying, to be honest. He does his best not to smirk, and definitely fails. He’s smug about it.

“You did,” Monty echoes, confused, and then frowns. “When?” he asks, like he doesn’t believe him.

“After the first week,” Bellamy says, figuring it’s close enough. Any later and he’ll probably sound like a jerk. “She thought it was funny.” Which is, technically, true. She laughed a lot about it, that first day.

Monty still seems skeptical, which is fair. Bellamy probably wouldn’t believe it, either.

And there is the fact that he’s lying, a little, so.

“Okay,” Monty says, clearly not sure where to go from here, since this conversation has not turned out as he expected. “Well. Good.”

Bellamy shrugs, glancing over to where Murphy is sitting, a pointed three seats away from everyone, nose ducked down in his book. He’s been avoiding Bellamy since that night at the cabin, so Bellamy just sort of sighs a little, and wheels over to him.

Murphy doesn’t even glance up, which is fine. Bellamy speaks, anyway. “You know we’re cool, right?” he asks, and when Murphy doesn’t respond, he corrects himself. “I mean, you’re still a dick and everything, but not because you like Wells. Wells is cool; if I liked guys, I’d like Wells. So, you know. That’s fine.”

By now, Murphy’s glaring up at him, looking impressively split between not giving a shit about anything, and wanting to punch Bellamy in the face. “As touching as this was,” he drawls, “I have some work to do.”

“Alright,” Bellamy nods, turning back towards his seat. “But I’m still expecting you to pay up on Prom night.”

“And I’m still expecting your ass to get dumped,” Murphy calls back, but it feels almost friendly.

He shows up to the next practice. He glares at Bellamy pretty much from the moment he walks in, with the very clear message _don’t you fucking dare try talking to me_ , but he’s _there_ , and that feels like something, at least. Progress, of some sort.

Bellamy never actually noticed most of the kids in his Earth Science class, until Forensics. The class is mostly for freshman and a few seniors looking to even out their science credits without anything that requires actual focus, like physics or AP Bio. As the only junior, he mostly just keeps to himself in the back, and does the extra credit word searches.

Except now he actually _knows_ Monroe and Harper and Sterling, and so when the class is given group work, they all flock to him like desperate baby turtles or something, like he’ll know where the water is, and show them.

“Okay, so we need to find an example of a sedimentary rock,” Sterling reads out with a frown. He’s clenching his book with white knuckles, wearing those fingerless gloves that Bellamy never really saw the point to.

It’s early afternoon and gray and miserable and freezing, and they’re all shivering outside the school, poking their boots at stray pebbles.

“I think this might be one,” Monroe says, teeth chattering a little, as she picks up a clump of dark gray. Harper leans over to get a good look at it, and frowns.

“I’m pretty sure that’s cement, Mon.”

“Yeah, but cement’s sedimentary, I thought,” Monroe argues, and Sterling flips through his book with numb fingers.

“No,” he says, frowning. His lips are going blue, and Bellamy’s a little worried. “No, I think you mean cementation, which _happens_ with sedimentary rocks, but it’s not, like, _cement_.”

Monroe tosses her bit of cement down with a scowl. “What the fuck,” she says, disgusted with it for tricking her.

Bellamy glances around at his group, looking as sad and dejected—and _cold_ —as the weather. The thing is, while he doesn’t really write epic poetry the way he used to, he hasn’t really outgrown his love for epic things, be them scenic Peter Jackson shots, poetry, or speeches.

He still _really_ likes the speeches.

“Hey, listen up,” he barks, and three heads bob up immediately, crowding in around him. Bellamy then proceeds to give the most heartfelt and epic speech of his life. He couldn’t recreate it if he tried. Sterling cries a little. Harper definitely sniffles. In that moment, he’s pretty sure they’d follow him into battle, or something. Maybe just one of those mock up Civil War ones, but still.

They find the sedimentary rock pretty quickly after that, and then race back to the heated classroom.

Clarke slides into her seat beside him, looking a little more pleasant than usual. Normally she looks sort of serious and pleasant, but now she looks just pleasant in general, and Bellamy doesn’t really trust it.

“Monroe told me you gave a rousing speech today,” she says, and he thinks he might actually die. “Very inspirational. Apparently Sterling cried.”

“Sterling cried at that video where the ducklings follow a cat,” he grumbles, because it’s true; Monty showed the whole team.

“And Raven said you write your own Homeric poetry,” Clarke continues, ignoring him completely. She slides a sheet of paper over to him, and it takes him a minute to realize it’s a page from the Forensics packet she’d shown him that first day.

The page says _Original Oratory_.

“You don’t have to change events,” Clarke shrugs. “I just thought you might want to look into it, at least. You could write your own work.”

“Is changing events allowed?” Bellamy asks, skimming the page. His throat’s a little dry, but it’s not from the weather. He didn’t even think Clarke _remembered_ about his poetry, let alone _cared_. And it’s nice, in a way it never really was, with Raven. Clarke’s actually interested. Raven just sort of endured it as another of his quirks. But he’s still not sure he’s ready to show anyone.

“Not _a lot_ ,” Clarke says with a shrug. “Most people stick with the same event all year, but a few changes are allowed. You’d be fine, since it’s your first year. Just don’t go flip-flopping a lot.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Bellamy says, wry. “Emerson and I are bros.”

Clarke shrugs again, pulling her textbook from her bag as the class shifts to attention, and the second bell rings. “Like I said, you don’t _have_ to. Just—think about it.”

He does, think about it, and folds the page into his notebook, to read later.

Clarke finds him at the old house, that Friday afternoon. She hadn’t been at school at all, and he’d sent a quick text offering soup, in case she was sick, but she didn’t respond.

But now here she is, standing uncertain in the doorway, looking like a marshmallow in a bright white fuzzy coat, so puffy it’s a little absurd. Her boots are white too, the kind with little pompoms dangling on the sides. He’s pretty sure she gets at least half her clothes from the American Girls shop.

“Hey,” he calls, when he sees her, and heads over as fast as he can—which isn’t _too_ fast, since they’ve just pried all the old, piss-stained floorboards up, leaving nothing but exposed beams and chunks of space between them and the ground below, every few feet. It’s sort of like a very precarious game of hopscotch.

But he drags over a few sheets of plywood for Clarke to use like stepping stones, until they get to the kitchen, where _some_ of the new hardwood’s been laid in, already.

They don’t get much work done in the winter, because union, and because Bellamy’s the only one that seems physically capable of handling the cold.

“You weren’t in school today,” he says, careful, and Clarke shrugs. She looks a little more tired than usual, with faint bruising under her eyes like she hasn’t gotten much sleep, but otherwise seems intact.

“My mom makes me take mental health days,” she admits. “When she thinks I’m not sleeping enough.”

“But you’re not sleeping enough,” he points out, and he wonders what it’s like, to have a parent so concerned about his health that they calculate how much sleep he’s gotten. It must be nice.

“Neurologist,” she gives a half-grin. “No amount of sleep’s ever enough.”

He hums a little, leaning against where he knows the counter will be—granite top and mahogany cupboards. Or maybe white quartz and cherry wood, or butcher’s block and oak. “So what’re you doing here?”

Clarke opens and shuts her mouth a few times, and she must be _really_ tired, because in the end she just sighs and shrugs a little. “I wanted to see you,” she admits, and Bellamy grins.

Until now, he hadn’t thought she was as stupid over him, as he was for her, but. Now he’s not so sure.

“Oh, I uh—I have something for you.” He hadn’t gotten a chance to give her the gloves, since she hasn’t actually stopped by the house since he bought them, so he digs them out of his bag, now.

She stares at them blankly for a minute before taking them, and he’s suddenly worried he made a very big mistake.

“Gardening gloves?” she asks, puzzled, and he reaches back to rub at where his neck’s gone warm.

“Work gloves,” he corrects, flailing an arm at the work site. “They’re thin, but the leather pads should guard against splinters. I don’t know how well they’ll do with the cold, but…” He trails off, because by now Clarke’s slipped them on, and is beaming up at him, like a pair of used, dirt-stained gloves is the actual best gift she’s ever gotten.

But then she’s frowning again, and nervous, and he really wishes they could just skip the _nervous_ stage already, and go straight to the one where they’re not embarrassed to tell each other things, and make out a lot.

“Next weekend’s tournament,” she starts, which makes sense, because when he and Clarke aren’t talking about their non-relationship, or Raven or Octavia, they’re talking about Forensics. And the next tournament is the last one before Christmas Break, next weekend, so there’s that as well. “It’s against Alpha.”

Bellamy chokes on absolutely nothing, glancing up to find her staring at him, unimpressed. “Your private school?”

“It’s not _my_ private school,” she says, annoyed. “But, yes.” She’s playing with the fingers of her gloves now, which leads Bellamy to believe that it’s not the end of it. “Anyway, their team captain, Lexa—she’s the one who got me into the whole Forensics thing. She’s the, um. Last person who asked me out. Before you.”

“What happened?” He’s not really sure where the conversation’s headed. He’d sort of assumed Clarke liked girls when they played _Who Would You Rather Marry_ , and she kept changing half of the options to women. He thinks she might be warning him to act jealous or something, to keep up their cover, but honestly he doesn’t really think she’s into the whole jealousy thing.

“I said yes,” she sighs, clearly exasperated with it all, running a hand through her curls absent-mindedly. “But I wanted to keep things between us. It’s not—” She makes a face, picking her words. “I wasn’t embarrassed, or anything, or scared. But the last person I’d dated was Finn, and you know how that turned out, and _everyone knew_ , so I just wanted it to be me and her for a while. At least at first.”

“Sounds reasonable,” he says, which must be the right response, because she flashes a smile. “So what went wrong?”

“She didn’t believe me,” Clarke frowns, lips thinning into a line. “She thought—I don’t know what she thought. But she outed me to the whole school, claiming she did it as a _favor_.” She pauses, like she’s trying to get all of her thoughts in order. Like she has to explain herself as articulately as possible, or else he won’t understand. “And the thing is, I _would have_ come out, eventually. But on my own terms, and at the right time. And Lexa just took that away from me.”

“She sounds like a dick,” Bellamy says, and she snorts. “Seriously, Clarke. What she did was fucked up, and _stupid_. She fucked up her shot with you. And we’re gonna kick her ass next Saturday.”

Clarke grins, leaning into his side, like she just _fits_ there. Which, he thinks, swinging his arm around her, she kind of does.

“You know this goes both ways, right?” she asks, poking him in his stomach. “If you have any exes, I can kick their asses too. I can tell you they’re not good enough.”

He laughs, chest hurting with the weight of it. “Uh, no exes on my part. But feel free to tell me I’m better than everybody else.”

Clarke tips her head back to grin up at him. “What are fake girlfriends for, right?”

The week before Winter Break goes by in a rush of last-minute make-up work, and extra credit, and test retakes, and plates of reindeer-shaped sugar cookies that Fox brings in every practice, and Bellamy gorges himself on until he feels sick.

He regrets it every time, until he sees another one.

Clarke—and even Wells, who’s started to actually show up at practice, because apparently he _can_ hold grudges against prejudiced prep schools—is slowly becoming maniacal, with the need to beat Alpha Academy. Apparently they’ve gone undefeated for the last ten years, and she’s looking to snap that record like a twig over her knee—with both hands, and no mercy.

“You know it’s going to be fine, right?” he asks, partly teasing but mostly because he is genuinely worried about the state of her blood pressure. It’s Friday, the day before the tournament itself, and Clarke’s eyes are bloodshot, he’s pretty sure from pure rage.

“Of course it is,” she snaps, sounding tired even to him. The anger seems pretty petulant at this point, like one of those little kids who steadfastly refuses to go to bed, even as they’re falling asleep on their feet. “Because we’re going to _win_.”

She’s holding his hand as she says it, so her sharp little nails dig into his skin with each word, and he winces.

“I’m just worried about her,” he tells Raven that night, staring up at his ceiling. He should probably be asleep, since they have such an early wake-up call, but. “What happens if we don’t beat them?”

“She’ll probably implode all over that Lexa girl’s face,” Raven says sensibly. “I’ve told you I don’t care like a million times. I’m trying to sleep—why won’t you let me sleep? Why do you hate me, Blake?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Bellamy huffs, which is sort of funny, given that he’s literally picturing his fake girlfriend imploding all over her ex-girlfriend’s face in the school cafeteria. It’ll be gross, and probably sticky, and obviously sad. He really doesn’t want it to happen.

He’s still thinking about it, when he and Raven reach the school the next morning. They bring O with them, since it’s technically a family event, and there’s a surprising number of kids her age there, which means he loses her almost immediately. There are a bunch of other family members there too, and Fox’s mom brings even _more_ reindeer cookies than usual, with the colored crystal sugar this time, and Harper’s dad has ordered everyone Egg McMuffin’s from McDonald’s, which is nice.

Clarke’s saved him a seat, and the usual cup of coffee, and he’s barely even sat down before she’s nestled up against him, which is nice, if a little confusing. She usually doesn’t cuddle this much unless they’re alone, which he actually prefers, since he’s pretty sure that means she generally wants to cuddle this much, but is too embarrassed to.

But then she moves until her face is in his neck, and whispers “That’s Lexa.”

He follows her gaze to an intense-looking brunette, sitting across the room with the other opposing team members. Her hair’s all sleek and shiny, pulled back in one of those intricate braids O likes to look up on Youtube, and her make up is in dark, jagged triangles around her eyes. She looks like the cover of one of those high-fashion magazines, with the outfits that look like stuff pulled out of a dumpster, but cost more that Indra’s house.

“Hot,” he deadpans, and Clarke laughs against his shoulder. “Want to make out, to piss her off or something?”

He’s mostly joking, but he kind of wants to see her blush a little, too. She doesn’t disappoint.

“Maybe next time,” she pats his knee. “Let’s make the rounds, and make sure everyone’s ready.”

“We’d make the best parents,” he declares, and they bump fists.

He does make his rounds—makes sure Jasper and Monty are actually _practicing_ and not just filming frito-throwing competitions for their vlog; runs lines with Harper and Fox, and lets them know which jokes might fall a bit short; helps Raven pare down her enormous collection of current events articles, which she clips out and keeps in a battered old Converse shoe box. Then he searches for Octavia, and finds her playing Hide and Seek with a bunch of the other kids, in the band room, which he _knows_ the band teacher will feel bitter about, if he ever finds out. Bellamy sort of hopes he does, just out of spite.

And then suddenly the first round is starting, and Clarke’s headed off to battle, looking stern-faced and serious. He presses a kiss to her hair before she leaves. “Knock em dead,” he whispers, and she squeezes his hand.

“You too.”

Raven’s smirking when he sits down beside her. “Shut up,” he says, but there’s no real heat to it. Lexa’s watching him from the end of the room, and he waves.

“You are such a little bitch,” Raven cackles, but he knows she’s probably fantasizing about hotwiring Lexa’s car so the radio switches onto the Country station whenever she flips on her windshield wipers, or something.

She’s slowly but surely mutilating one of the reindeer cookies, because Raven hates everything that is good, and has to do with Christmas. Bellamy’s amazed she even helped Clarke decorate, without setting the snowflakes on fire or something. She’s always hated the holidays, because they meant Christmas Break, which meant two weeks where she couldn’t use “school stuff” as an excuse to be away from Nygel. Plus, the social worker always visits a lot over the holidays, so Raven always has to be there just in case, and on her best behavior.

Bellamy reads his poem, because it was too late for him to switch events for this tournament, and he’s still not convinced he wants to, anyway. Raven performs, and Harper and Fox, and Monroe, and even Murphy—although Bellamy’s not sure what. He’s in the event Dramatic Interpretation, which could mean literally anything. He’s just sort of picturing Murphy staring out at the audience, silently, with judgement.

Finally, the rounds are finished, and everyone’s just sort of milling around, munching on vending machine snacks and chatting with their teammates. Normally, they’d go around and get to know students from the different schools, but Ark and Alpha seem to have wordlessly agreed to just skip the pleasantries and go straight into blood feud, which at least saves everyone some time.

That’s when Clarke finds him, rushed and a little harried, even as she slots into his side and he grins hopelessly down at her, catching a knowing smile from Harper’s dad before he wanders off.

“Hey,” he starts, but she just shakes her head.

“I know it’s against your rule,” she says, “But Lexa keeps trying to talk to me, and I just thought maybe if she _saw_ that we’re together, that—”

He sees Lexa as Clarke’s talking, of course. She walks into the room, and catches sight of them instantly, like she’s been searching them out. He doesn’t really need any more incentive.

Bellamy kisses her, cutting her off, but he’s pretty sure she won’t mind. He kisses her like he’s been imagining, since that night on her front porch, when they were drunk and didn’t really know what they were doing. He kisses her like he _wants_ to, like he knows this is the only chance he’ll get, and so he’ll make sure it’s worth it. Because speeches and poetry aren’t the only things he likes to be all-consuming. He wants to know that she won’t forget this.

And Clarke kisses him back, throwing her arms up around him, letting her fingers graze that spot between his cheek and his jawline, the one that’s hers. She runs her tongue against his lip until he groans and opens for her, and she smiles like she’s just won a radio call-in contest, the kind that depends entirely on luck and good timing.

There’s a throat clearing beside them, and when they pull back, Clarke’s mouth is pink and swollen, her eyes wide and dark, and he knows he can’t look much better.

The throat belongs to one of the judges, not from their school so he doesn’t know her name, and she looks decidedly displeased with their sudden display of affection.

Clarke wins the first place trophy, anyway, but Bellamy’s the one who looks smuggest, when Lexa offers them a quiet _congratulations_ , before boarding her bus home.

He helps Clarke stick the trophy up with the others in the spare Algebra room, and then walks her to her car. It’s dark out, since the sun sets so early this time of year, and she’s wearing the gloves he got her, even though they can’t be doing much for warmth. She’s got her Santa hat on, and he tugs the end of it, because it feels too familiar _not_ to.

“So,” she starts, hesitant, smiling up at him with a nose so frozen it’s gone pink. “We never did have that fake date.”

“No,” he agrees, grinning back, still a little overwhelmed with the thrill of winning, and of kissing Clarke Griffin.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asks, and he laughs, because—he’s pretty sure they’re each just waiting at this point, for the other to be ready, and he’s starting to think they won’t be waiting for very long, at all.

They decide to go to the movies. Neither of them know what’s playing, so they’ll pick when they get there. It all feels very sixth grade, the first time he went to see a film with a girl he liked, and no parental supervision. Cherry slushy staining the corners of their mouths, clammy hands held above the cup holder.

But now it’s _Clarke Griffin_ , and even if all they do is hold hands, and share a cherry slushy, he probably won’t mind.

Raven leaves as soon as he gets home; she’d just been waiting for him, before packing a bag to head back to her own house. The social worker always stops by in the mornings, so she’ll have to start spending her nights there, again.

He sends her off with a peanut butter sandwich, just in case, which she grumbles about but takes anyway.

Bellamy meets Clarke around noon, and finds her waiting outside the old theater downtown, with a _different_ pink hat on, and little snow flurries—the kind so small that they melt when they touch the ground—caught in her hair and eyelashes. She grins when she sees him, and he knows there’s no biting his back. Not when everything feels this _possible_ , this close to the surface, just waiting to scratch its way out.

She takes his hand almost instantly, leading him over to the ticket booth, and talking him into some showy film about idealism and horses during war. To be honest, he doesn’t need much convincing; he probably won’t pay much attention, anyway.

“Octavia?” she asks, while they wait in line. “She’s set for the day?”

Bellamy grins down at her. Raven’s really his only friend that’s ever known O, or cared about her, and even she still forgets, sometimes, so it’s nice to have someone else check in. “Yeah,” he nods. “You’re planning on stealing me for the whole day?”

Clarke squeezes his hand a little. “Maybe even longer.”

They don’t share a cherry slushy, but they do share popcorn and hold hands. Clarke doesn’t get a drink, because she doesn’t want to chance having to use the bathroom, and missing an important scene. Bellamy gets an extra-large Mountain Dew, because he lives life on the edge. He has to pee four times through the whole thing. Clarke thinks he’s ridiculous.

“I can’t _believe_ you just bought a ticket to use their bathroom, basically,” she says, as they’re leaving. She’s got his hand stuffed in her jacket’s enormous pocket, because neither of them are wearing gloves, and her fingers get cold easily. “Honestly, why’d you even bother?”

“To spend time with you,” he says, easily. It’s a lot easier, now that he knows she probably feels the same way. He’s just been waiting for the right moment—and he’s pretty sure it’s right now.

“Oh,” Clarke hums a little, grinning up at him, like she’s waiting for something, too. Or maybe she’s waiting for him.

“I was really hoping to do this in a darkened theater,” he mumbles, mouth just a few breaths from hers, and she laughs.

“We can always go buy another ticket,” she says, leaning up to meet him.

Their lips have only just begun to brush, when Bellamy’s phone rings in his pocket. He’d turned it on as soon as the credits started to roll, so O could reach him in case of an emergency.

But it’s Raven’s name that flashes on the screen, which makes Bellamy frown. She knows about the date—he’d called and freaked out at her about it—so she wouldn’t call and interrupt, if it wasn’t important.

“Raven?” he asks, hesitant, because he’s not really sure he’ll like the answer. “What’s wrong?”

Raven lets out a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and his hand tightens around Clarke’s, in her pocket. “She finally fucking did it,” she says, voice hoarse, like she’s been crying, or screaming, or both.

“Who finally did it?” he asks, even though he pretty much knows. “What did they do?”

She makes that noise again, the tail end turning into a snort, but not like she finds it funny. “Nygel,” she says, short. Angry.

“She fucking took everything, Blake.”

Bellamy stands there, staring, not sure if he should ask what she means. He _knows_ , really. He’s known ever since Raven first said he and O couldn’t come over, anymore.

But Raven ignores his silence, anyway.

“I’m at the gas station—the Kangaroo on 12th. Come get me?” She sounds smaller than he’s ever heard her, and so he starts off towards the BMW, Clarke marching steadily at his side.

“We’re on our way,” he says. “Don’t move.”

Raven gives a hoarse laugh. “Where am I gonna go?” she asks. “There’s nothing fucking left.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s pretty sure that if he’s not in love with Clarke Griffin already, he will be very, very soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short lil update chapter because i feel bad about making you guys wait so long (sorry!)

Clarke drives two miles over the speed limit, which is a testament to how worried she must be. When they pull up to the Kangaroo, which hasn’t actually sold gasoline in almost six months and has holey plastic bags stuck over the pumps like flimsy hats, Raven’s sitting out on the curb, clutching a Styrofoam cup of the shitty coffee sludge all gas stations sell, in those big plastic vats that say JAVA. She’s talking to someone on her jigsaw puzzle of a phone, but hangs up when she sees the BMW.

He’s out of the car before Clarke’s even fully parked, and jogs over to her. The skin around her eyes is pink like she’s been crying, but her face is dry by now, and she gives him this fucking _hollow_ grin.

“Told me so, right?”

“Nah,” he sits down beside her, hitting the curb hard enough to bruise. She lets him take the cup from her, and he gives it an experimental sniff before wincing and what’s left on the dead grass, on his other side. “I was pretty careful not to mention it.”

She huffs a laugh but not like it’s funny. She’s still not looking at him, or Clarke as she slides into place on Raven’s left, without a word.

She leans her head on Raven’s shoulder, tucks her arm around her side. “You can come home with me,” she offers. “My mom already loves you. We can watch all the _Scream_ movies again.”

Raven snorts a little, blowing Clarke’s curls from her face. “She left,” she says, and they don’t need to ask who she’s talking about. “Social services found out she was spending the checks they sent, for my college fund. They were gonna come over today and talk to her about it, maybe press charges, I don’t know. When I woke up, she was gone, and she took every fucking thing with her. She emptied the fucking _fridge_. They said she’s technically missing, but. She’s not. She just left.”

Raven sniffs a little, wiping a skinny wrist across her mouth. Bellamy isn’t sure what to do with his hands—Raven doesn’t really _do_ physical affection, unless she’s drunk or has a fever. Clarke’s probably already pushing it, but he’s not sure Clarke knows there are people who don’t like hugs. At least, not _friends_ who don’t like hugs.

And he has no idea what to say—what is there to say, about any of this? _Yeah, Nygel’s a real dick_. Everyone knows that, already. And if he tries to say _sorry_ , she’ll just scowl and say _it’s not_ your _fault, dumbass_. What he really needs is a term that means _I’m sympathetic towards what you’re going through, and I’m here for you and whatever you need._

Once again, he’s being failed by the English language.

“They don’t have a family ready to take me,” Raven says, voice scratchy, after a moment of quiet. “It’s the holidays, so. They’re gonna send me to stay in a group home.”

“No fucking way,” Bellamy says, at the same time Clarke says “Absolutely _not_.” Raven snorts at the both of them, which seems fair, all things considered.

“You’re coming home with me,” Clarke says, firm, and softens when Raven looks ready to argue. “Just for tonight, at least. Come on. I still have some of those brownies leftover.”

Raven snorts. “Those brownies were a fucking tragedy, Griffin.”

“I think they’re good,” Clarke shrugs, and then stands up, holding her arm out. “We’ll get Bellamy and O to try them.”

“I don’t know how I feel about eating tragic brownies,” Bellamy says, but he stands up too, and now they’re both looking down at Raven, face at war with her thoughts.

Finally, she sighs “Alright, fine,” and throws both her arms up in the air. “Help me up, assholes, my butt’s gone numb.”

Clarke spins the radio dial a few times when they climb back in her car, until The Ramones starts up. Bellamy watches Raven sit up a little higher, getting closer to the music like it’s a fire and she’s cold. He almost expects her to put her palms up by the speakers, to warm them.

She stops by Bellamy’s on the way, pulling over without a word. “I thought you might want to bring Octavia,” she says. Her nose is still pink from the cold air outside, even though she has the seat warmers on.

“Thanks, princess.” He leans over the console to swipe a kiss across her cheek, just because he wants to, and feels her shiver under his mouth.

When he pulls back, she’s flushing, and he glances at the rearview mirror in time to see Raven making a face, which seems like a good sign. She’s texting someone, and her phone screen lights the backseat up eerily. It’s only sometime in the afternoon, but the sun always sets this early in the winter. They never get any snow, but they get every other horrible thing that comes with the season—like icy sidewalks and cold fronts and nighttime at four in the afternoon.

Indra’s watching one of her stories on TV—it’s the old one in the dining room, with wood paneled sides and dials and two metal antennas held in place with that blue tape used for painting. She hates the flat screen, and he’s not sure why, but it probably has something to do with the government, or the fact that she’s convinced cell phones lead to breast cancer, somehow.

Octavia’s at the table, because she gravitates towards other people, no matter how many black things she wears. She’s coloring in an old dictionary, running the words over with red and orange crayons, based on whether or not she likes them. She’s got her hair pulled away in some weird hybrid of braids, but there’s a clump near the back where she missed some.

He pulls the chair out beside her with his foot hooked under the bottom rung, and sits down, leaning his head on her shoulder till she squirms. “Hey, wanna come to Clarke’s house with me and Raven?”

Octavia shrugs him off and gives him a look that says _is that even a question?_ before rolling her eyes and stuffing her nubby crayons back in the Ziploc, plastic beginning to pill with age.

“Who’s Clarke?” Indra asks, not taking her eyes off the screen, and Bellamy freezes for a moment, not sure how to react. It shouldn’t be this hard, interacting with his great-aunt. He’s just so used to her not asking questions.

“His girlfriend,” O sing-songs, when he takes too long to speak. “She’s really pretty. And _rich_.”

“I’m glad to know those are your priorities,” he says, dry, and Octavia shrugs, slipping off of her chair with a bounce.

“She’s nice, too, but of course she’s nice,” she says, like it’s obvious. “She’s dating you.”

Bellamy stares at her for a minute. “I can’t tell if that was supposed to be a compliment, or a burn.”

Octavia shrugs again, leaving it up to his interpretation, and disappears to find her rain boots, the black and purple ones she’s been wearing nonstop for five weeks.

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” Indra muses, but she doesn’t sound mad, or even all that interested. Bellamy fidgets a little, not sure what to say, because—he _doesn’t_ have a girlfriend, not really. They may have been about to make out in the theater, but that doesn’t mean they’re _dating_. They should probably talk about it. He’s pretty sure she’s ready, and she _likes_ him, and she wouldn’t just kiss him to lead him on. That’s not Clarke’s style.

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat a little, which just makes it sound even more like a lie. “Her name’s Clarke. She runs the Forensics Club.”

He’s not a hundred percent sure Indra actually knows what _Forensics Club_ means, even though he’s definitely told her, and he left the year’s tournament schedule up on the fridge. She just keeps her eyes on the television, as the picture goes all squiggly, with the color leeching down towards the bottom. She doesn’t seem to care about that, either. Indra is the most impassive person Bellamy’s ever known.

“Good for you,” she says, eventually, and Octavia pokes her head in the door to see what’s taking him so long.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, hopping up before she can decide to continue the least emotional heart-to-heart he’s ever had, and follows O out to the car.

Clarke and Raven seem to have moved on from The Ramones, and are bobbing their heads to some fist-banging all girl punk band. Well, Clarke’s bobbing her head, hair swishing and catching on the light leaking in from the streetlamps. Raven’s got her bad leg propped up across the backseat, and is enjoying the music with her usual stoic demeanor.

“Hey, little Blake,” she grins, as Octavia slides in beside her. She offers her fist to bump, which is their usual greeting, since they’re both a little disdainful towards affection in general, and also because they both like to hit things with their fists.

But Octavia’s always been more perceptive than they ever remember to give her credit for, so she stares at Raven for a full minute, eyeing her suspiciously, before wrapping both arms around her middle like she’s bracing for a fight. She even _hugs_ aggressively.

Raven just sort of lets it happen for a moment, before finally leaning in, reaching an arm around to pat O’s back uncertainly. Clarke and Bellamy don’t mention it, but he glances in the mirror to check on them every few minutes, and O stays wrapped around her for the whole ride.

Bellamy hasn’t been back to Clarke’s house since Halloween, and he’s sort of expecting to walk into some sort of Winter Wonderland. Soft cotton rolls of fake snow laid out on the rooftops, enormous wreaths of holly on the door, the smell of gingerbread and peppermint drifting through each bit of air.

But instead, everything’s exactly the same as it was back in September. Nice hardwood floors, nice handwoven rugs, nice vases and picture frames perfectly tying each room together—but no candy canes, or red-and-green strings of lights, or paper snowflakes. There isn’t even a Christmas tree in the corner, and everything just smells like that fancy potpourri sold at the outlet mall.

“I thought for sure this place would look like a snow globe,” he says, as Clarke leads them down the hall. “One of those classy ones, with snowmen and skiers on the Alps.”

Clarke gives a half-shrug, a little stiffer than usual. “My mom doesn’t like decorating,” she says, voice carefully light. “My dad’s the one who really got into all that stuff, and—she just doesn’t like it, anymore.” She looks over at him, embarrassed. “It’s why I went sort of overboard at your house—I was just really excited.”

“ _Sort of_ overboard?” he teases, nudging her shoulder, and she laughs, before glancing back at Raven and O behind them, like she feels guilty for forgetting to be sad.

“Clarke?” a woman—Clarke’s mom, he’s pretty sure—calls from a back room. Clarke makes a face at him before calling back.

“Yeah, it’s me. I brought some friends home, and we need to talk to you.”

“I’m in the kitchen.”

The kitchen is exactly as Bellamy remembers it, except now there’s one of those wide-lipped glass candle jars, that come with the pillowed top. It’s open and lit, and smells overwhelmingly of lavender, but not like the plant. More like expensive perfume, or those scent bracelets the girls used to wear in elementary school.

Clarke’s mom, the doctor, is wearing a pair of matching pinstriped pajamas. The kind sold in sets, tucked in little plastic bags at Bed Bath and Beyond. He didn’t actually know people _wore_ matching pajamas. He’s suddenly very sure that she keeps them ironed, on hangers in her closet. She probably doesn’t even _own_ a dresser; doesn’t believe in the wrinkles that folding her clothes might create. She probably subscribes to a million different Home and Garden magazines, without ever actually designing a home, or gardening.

She’s drinking something out of a porcelain mug—not bone china, like he was expecting, which means she might not be as pretentious as he first thought. The mug says #1 Momologist, so. It’s not really something you’d find in one of those Harvard lounge rooms, with the matching antique furniture sets and the cobblestone fireplace and the _rugs_. Bellamy got to visit Harvard on a class trip, once, and he’ll never understand why there were so many first editions of the same books, and so many _rugs_. How many rugs does a law student need? What do rugs have to do with anything?

“Raven, it’s lovely to see you again,” Clarke’s mom—he should probably learn her name, at some point—says, smiling a little. She takes in Bellamy and Octavia. “And—Bellamy, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and Clarke elbows him in the side.

“You can call her Abby,” she says, rolling her eyes a little, clearly exasperate. Meanwhile, her mom—or, Abby, which he will probably never actually call her—looks relatively amused.

“It’s a respect thing,” he hisses back, and she scoffs, even though he knows for a fact she’d call Indra _Mrs. Blake_ without a second thought.

“Raven needs to talk to you,” Clarke says, and her mom sobers at her tone. Bellamy glances back at Raven. Octavia’s still wrapped around one of her arms, looking determined to cheer her up through aggressive clinging. Raven, meanwhile, looks determined to not show any emotion at all.

“About anything in particular?” Mrs. Griffin—which seems like the safest thing to call her—probes. She does it casually, like she’s just curious, which seems like a very Doctor thing to do.

“Her foster mom’s gone,” Clarke says, firm and to the point, and Raven stiffens a little, straightening her back, lest someone think she’s upset about it.

Mrs. Griffin seems to notice, though, and sets her mug down softly. “Let’s talk in private,” she suggests, and Raven only hesitates a little before disentangling herself from O and trailing after Mrs. Griffin, into the next room.

Clarke glances over at him, bottom lip pulled between her teeth with worry, and Bellamy _knows_ he shouldn’t want to kiss her right now, all things considered, but the conversation with Indra is still stuck to the sides of his mind like syrup, and he’s itching to know he still _can_.

He looks at O from the side of his eye, just for a second, but it’s enough for her to notice and throw her arms in the air with a huff. “ _Fine_ —I’m gonna go snoop around, so you guys can be gross together.” She sounds incredibly put-upon about it, but he knows she was waiting for an excuse to be nosy. She didn’t get to look around much last time, and meddling is Octavia’s favorite hobby.

“Don’t touch anything,” he says, stern, but she just rolls her eyes and skips down the hall, probably to get her smudgy thumb prints on all their nice, color-coordinated family photos.

Bellamy turns back to Clarke, who’s looking serious again, with that little wrinkle in between her brows. He reaches out to press his thumb against it, soft, smoothing it out, and she blinks up at him in surprise. He is too, but it’s not like he can pull away _now_ —that’d look stupid. So he keeps his hand on her face, moving to cup her cheek a little, and she leans against his palm.

“Even with everything that’s happened—I still feel really happy,” she says, quiet, glancing up at him. “Does that make me horrible?”

“You’re allowed to feel things, Clarke.” She turns her face, to press her mouth against the heel of his palm, and Bellamy’s heart stutters a little.

“What about you?” she asks, and he frowns a little, confused and still kind of dizzy from the wet feel of her mouth on his skin.

“What about me?”

“Are you happy?” She’s looking up at him through her lashes, because she’s short, and stubborn and doesn’t want to tip her head back.

“That depends,” he licks his lips and sees her eyes follow the movement. “Do I get to kiss you again?”

Clarke beams up at him, stretching forward on her toes so he can meet her halfway. It’s the kiss he should have given her outside the theater, warm and soft and blooming, learning the way her mouth moves with his. She opens up with a pleased little noise, deep in her throat, and he smooths his hand into her hair, tangling his fingers up with the little braid she made out of the front parts, tied back. She doesn’t seem to mind, just curls her hands in his shirt, digging her nails into the skin of his stomach underneath until he shivers.

She pulls away, mumbling _sorry_ , rubbing where she scratched him, in apology.

“I want to take you on a date,” he says, blurts really, because he can’t keep it in anymore. He’s already spent months holding back, he doesn’t want to wait another second. “A real one, this time.”

“You just want to make out in the movies,” she teases, and he grins.

“I’m hoping to make out in a lot of other places, too,” he says, and she goes pink all over.

But when he ducks down to kiss her again, her hand goes flat on his chest, and she’s starting to look sorry again. “I’m—we probably shouldn’t,” she says, and he must not school his face as well as he thinks, because she’s quick to add “Not yet, at least. Not with everything that’s going on. We should probably wait until Raven’s okay.”

Bellamy nods, unwrapping his hand from her hair, slow so he doesn’t rip the strands out. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he says, even though it doesn’t. Raven would kick their asses for this, he knows, but Clarke seems to think she’s not allowed to be happy unless everyone else is, too, so he’ll give her this.

She takes his hand, where it’s dropped to his side, and tangles their fingers together. “I like you, Bellamy,” she says, soft. Like she’s trying to convince him. “A lot, actually. More than anyone, and I want to make out at the movies, and other places, and—” She’s flushing now, mottled patches of bright pink up and down her cheeks and the sides of her neck, and she isn’t looking at him, like she’s embarrassed, so he cuts her off.

“You don’t have to explain yourself, princess.” He tugs her in a little, but she still seems hesitant until he throws his arm around her shoulders. “Hugs are okay, right?”

She says something, but it’s muffled by his sweater, where she’s buried her face. But she’s nodding, so he’s pretty sure it was something like _yes_.

“Ugh,” Octavia says from the doorway, scrunching her nose up in disgust. Clarke giggles a little, pulling back—but she doesn’t let go of his hand.

“What, worried about cooties?” Bellamy teases, and O scoffs.

“I’m not a baby, Bell,” she says, scrambling up to perch on the kitchen bar stool. It’s made out of some sort of heavy hardwood—probably mahogany or something, for like thirty dollars each at one of those expensive furniture stores that sell little elephant statuettes.

“No one would accuse you of that,” Clarke tells her, serious, and Octavia grins.

Mrs. Griffin walks in then, looking impressive and grave—but that might just be him projecting. Raven follows, and her eyes are redder than before, and she’s wiping at them with her sleeve.

“Clarke, could I speak with you for a minute?” her mom asks, but it doesn’t sound like a question. Clarke just nods, squeezes his hand twice, and then follows her into the back room.

Raven goes up to maneuver her way on the second stool, hooking her cane on the countertop with a grimace. “You guys snooped, right? Tell me you found the liquor—they’re rich, they probably have that tequila with the real gold in it.”

But she’s laying her head on her arms, on the counter, looking more tired than anything else. Octavia pats the back of her head, where her ponytail’s beginning to slip out.

“What’d she say?” he asks, moving to slide onto the last stool, on her other side. He has to move her can to fit there, so he hooks it on his arm and lets it dangle.

“Oh, you know,” she shrugs, eyeing the light fixture above the huge kitchen sink, in the middle of the island. The light’s made out of metal, twisted to form vines and leaves and little curly tendrils that wrap around the lightbulbs—the pointy kind, that come with those fake plastic candles that stick to glass windows and doors.

“The usual. I don’t deserve this, I’m so strong, I’m welcome anytime, yada yada.” She’s picking at her nails, now, and Bellamy knows what that means. She pulls off a sliver of skin and hisses, little drops of blood welling up at the wound.

Bellamy reaches for the roll of paper towels—the pillowed kind, with little dragonflies printed on each sheet—right as Clarke walks back into the room. She zeroes in on Raven’s finger almost immediately, which he’s assuming is some sort of superpower for doctors’ kids.

“What did you do?” she asks, exasperated, and tears the paper towel into little strips, before wrapping one around Raven’s finger and tying it in a knot.

Raven shrugs. “Pretty sure you don’t need to tourniquet it, Griffin.”

“Pretty sure you don’t need to injure yourself, Reyes,” Clarke says, only a little irritated. Raven huffs, but lets her finish wrapping a _third_ strip, before pulling back.

Clarke turns to Bellamy, looking for all the world like they hadn’t been making out just five minutes before. “Mom said you can sleep on the sofa,” she says, and then adds “It pulls out,” like that’s some sort of incentive. Bellamy glances back at the thing—it’s the width of his twin-sized bed, already; he can’t even imagine what it might look like, pulled out. Possibly a California King. It’s already the nicest thing he’s ever slept in, and he hasn’t even slept in it yet.

Raven has taken O somewhere—probably to snoop some more, in search of any hidden DVD’s or other modern bits of technology that she can hoard like a dragon.

“Your mom’s okay with me sleeping over?” he asks, even though it’s probably a stupid question—if Mrs. Griffin _wasn’t_ okay with it, she probably would have just asked him to leave.

Clarke looks similarly unimpressed. “Obviously,” she says, which is fair, but it also puts him on the defensive automatically.

“I just mean, she isn’t worried we’re going to…” he trails off, waiting for her to understand, and is a little gratified when she flushes immediately.

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think we’ll try to use Raven’s tragic home life as a hook up,” she sniffs, and he’s a little shamed for even thinking it.

But she’s still blushing, so there’s that at least.

“What about those two?” He nods his head towards the hall, where they can hear O and Raven plotting something.

“Raven can sleep in my room. I have a trundle bed,” she looks a little embarrassed about it, and he grins. “And Octavia can sleep in the guest bed.”

“I hope she doesn’t get too spoiled around you,” he grumbles. “I don’t need _two_ princesses in my life.” Clarke hits him in the face with the roll of paper towels, and it turns into an impromptu wrestling match, until he has her with her back pressed up against the lip of the bar, reaching for the roll he’s holding up above his head.

Her breaths are landing on the skin of his neck, they’re so close, and he looks down at her through her lashes, to catch her staring at his mouth.

“This whole no-kissing thing really isn’t going to work,” he says, pressing his lips to hers before she can answer.

In between breaths, she says “I didn’t say no kissing, I said no _dating_ ,” she runs her hands up his arms, all appreciative hums. “We can definitely kiss.”

“No dating _yet_ ,” he specifies, and she grins, nipping the skin of his jaw.

Someone clears their throat at the other end of the kitchen, and they turn to find Mrs. Griffin standing, with a stack of bedsheets and old clothes in her hands. She looks equally uncomfortable and disapproving, and Bellamy jumps about ten steps back. Clarke just rolls her eyes at him, setting the paper towels back in their place.

“I have some of Jake’s old clothes for you,” Mrs. Griffin says, handing him a pair of thin sweatpants with FATHERBOWL down one pant leg, and an old Cal-Tech t-shirt.

Bellamy’s not really sure how he feels about wearing Clarke’s dead dad’s clothes to bed, but he’s not about to tell her mom _no_. That’s just rude.

“Thanks.” He takes the clothes, shooting a quick glance to Clarke, who’s having some weird stare-down with her mother. She seems to win, and grabs the bedsheets in a bundle, before turning towards the sofa.

“I’ll help you get settled in,” she says, and he sneaks a look at her mom, pursing her lips, but she doesn’t say anything, so he figures it’s fine.

Clarke pulls the three enormous cushions out, stacking them against the wall, before they reach in for the metal bars and yank. The mattress falls open with several loud groans of metal on metal, clearly not used very often, if ever at all. Bellamy makes the bed in no time, having perfected the art of fitted sheets when he first moved in with Indra.

When he turns back around, Clarke’s perched on the stack of giant cushions, watching him, smile playing at the edges of her mouth.

“I have to change,” he says, a warning, and her grin widens.

“ _I’m_ not stopping you.”

He glares a little, trying to call her bluff, but Clarke just smirks back, so he takes off his shirt and reaches for the threadbare Cal-Tech one. Her eyes darken a little, and her cheeks are going red, but that’s the only evidence she’s even effected. He’s still expecting her to hop up and scurry away, as he goes for the button of his jeans, but she stays where she is, legs crossed and foot tapping aimlessly against the cushion, a soft _thud thud thud_ in the room. She’s kicked her boots off at some point, and her socks are the same pattern as the Christmas sweaters sold at JC Penny’s.

Bellamy changes his pants quicker than he ever has in his life, having forgotten he was wearing the Captain America boxers, but when he turns around, Clarke looks a little slack-jawed. It’s maybe a little embarrassing, but suddenly he’s feeling pretty self-confident.

“Way to objectify me,” he teases, and she snorts, sliding down to the floor.

“You’re very pretty,” she chirps, stepping in to kiss him, quick and dry. “Goodnight, Bellamy.”

He has to scour the room to shut off all the lights, because each time he thinks he has, there’s some other fancy lamp in a corner or on a bookshelf, and he has to figure out how to turn it off. Finally, the only source of light in the room is one of those plugs with the special motion sensor bulb that wards off insects, so he just faces away and tries to sleep.

The couch bed _is_ the most comfortable thing he’s ever slept in, but it’s almost _too_ comfortable. It feels too strange, and he doesn’t know this house’s noises like he knows his own. O’s always been able to just curl up anywhere—the windowsill at the library, under clothes racks in the store, in one of those bucket seats at the airport—and fall asleep instantly, but Bellamy’s mind takes hours to shut off.

He’s nearly at the brink, at that edge where the world becomes bleary and a little surreal, when Clarke pads into view, changed into a pair of soft-looking shorts and an old summer camp shirt stained with paint. She’s still wearing those socks, and that’s what he focuses on, because if he even glances up, he won’t be able to _not_ touch her.

“Bad dream?” he guesses, and she huffs a little laugh, somehow managing to make it sound like a whisper.

“I’m—this isn’t—can I maybe, um, sleep here?” she asks, stuttering over the words, clearly nervous. Her hair’s all piled up on her head, sloppy, so chunks of it fall around her face and neck, glowing paler than normal in the weird bug light.

Bellamy’s mouth goes completely dry, which seems unfair. “What happened to not turning this into a hook up?”

It’s too dark to tell, obviously, but he’s pretty confident she’s blushing. “It’s _not_ , I just.” She worries her lip a little, like she’s somehow still unsure he doesn’t _want_ _her_. “It seems stupid, to sleep up there when you’re down here, and I could be too.”

He only hesitates a moment before rolling over, holding the blanket open in invitation. Clarke doesn’t wait a second before diving in, curling up against his chest. “Yeah,” he agrees, settling his arm around her as her sharp little nose digs into his neck. “I get it.”

“My mom’s gonna call social services in the morning,” Clarke says, interrupted mid-sentence by a yawn. He pulls her in tighter, so tight it probably hurts a little, but she doesn’t complain.

“Thank you.”

She hums, and he can hear her thinking in the quiet. “She’s lucky to have you,” she says, and the feel of her lips moving on his skin as she speaks makes him shiver.

“You’re the one that’s helping her,” he points out. “And your mom.”

Clarke pokes a finger in his side so sharp he jumps. “She’s lucky to have you,” she repeats, sterner this time. “ _I’m_ lucky to have you. You’re a good friend, Bellamy Blake.”

“So are you, Clarke Griffin,” he says, and it sounds a little mocking, but he means every word, and he’s pretty sure she knows it.

“Yeah,” she agrees, tangling their legs together under the blanket, and butting her head up right under his chin, so they fit like puzzle pieces. “I am.”

Bellamy huffs a laugh, dislodging some of her hair so it trickles lightly against his chin, making his skin itch a little. He smooths it back behind her bun, grown impressively tangled on the pillow. “Go to sleep, Clarke.”

“Fine,” she says, but the word’s completely warped by an enormous yawn. “But just because I’m really tired,” she adds, petulant even when sleepy. “Not because you told me to.”

“I believe you,” he promises, and she hums a little, before going limp.

Bellamy doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes, dawn is just beginning, the sky still dark but tinged lavender around the edges, from the sun. He feels Clarke stir against him, and he hasn’t even opened his eyes yet when her mouth is on his. He can feel the sleepy smile on her lips, and he knows his mouth must taste disgusting, stale from sleep and teeth not brushed since before their fake date at the movies—but Clarke doesn’t seem to mind.

She rolls off him way too soon, grinning and blinking her eyes, lashes stuck together with sleep crust that be brushes away with his thumb. “Coffee?” she suggests, voice way too gravelly for him to handle.

“Yes, please,” he agrees, and he must sound similar, because Clarke leans back in immediately.

This kiss is impossibly short, and then she’s bouncing off the mattress, padding over to the kitchen in shorts way too thin and short for winter. She lost her hair tie in sleep, it seems, and her curls fall down her back in messy frizz and tangles.

Clarke fills up an electronic kettle with water from the sink, and pours a few spoonful’s of coffee grounds into the glass French Press on the counter. Bellamy folds up the blanket before walking over to the kitchen, to watch her as she works.

She carries two steaming mugs—his is blue, with a shiny gold rooster silhouetted against the backdrop. He tries not to read into it—over to where he’s sitting on the first bar stool. Her foot knocks against his as she clambers into her seat. He takes an experimental sip, small and short, in case it’s hot enough to burn his tongue, ruining the rest of his day.

It’s not too hot, and it tastes all at once familiar—chocolate and cinnamon, like the coffee she brings him at school, in the paper to-go latte cups he’s grown used to.

“Is this the kind you bring in the mornings?” he asks, and Clarke just stares into her cup as she blushes.

“I like making coffee at home,” she defends, even though he can tell all at once that’s not the real reason.

The real reason, he’s pretty sure, is she likes making coffee _for him_.

He’s also pretty sure that if he’s not in love with Clarke Griffin already, he will be very, very soon.

He’s getting ready to tell her that, because Bellamy blurts things he really shouldn’t when he’s nervous, when Raven staggers into the room, mussed from sleep and cranky from waking up so early.

“Where the fuck is your caffeine?” she demands, but the effect is sort of lost because she’s too tired to really go all-out with the rage. Mostly she’s just sighing, and squinting around the room like a blind baby rat, sniffing out the coffee.

Clarke flashes him a grin, all fond exasperation that makes his insides melt, before hopping down to fetch Raven a mug, and then some half-and-half from the fridge because Raven likes her coffee room temperature. She doesn’t sit on the first stool, just leans against the counter instead, gulping her drink down so fast he’s worried she might choke on it.

“What are you doing up so early, anyway?” he asks, and Raven finishes the last of it before setting the mug down with a sigh. She’s still all wrinkled and tired-looking, but her eyes are less squinty.

“It’s a new fucking day,” she shrugs, and it’s hard to argue with that logic.

Clarke grins, bumping her toes against the sole of his foot, like she can tell what he’s thinking. He’s pretty sure she can. “It’s a new fucking day,” she agrees, clinking all of their mugs together, like they’re champagne glasses, and the words are a toast.

“It’s a new fucking day,” he echoes, and outside, the sky begins to burn a soft yellow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke’s grin looks wicked in the dim light cast by the street lamps, fading as quickly as it comes as the needle inches its way up her speedometer. She’s beginning to cross over the speed limit, and she doesn’t even seem to care.
> 
> Bellamy kind of likes this new, dangerous-looking Clarke. More than he probably should. She feels electric, like if he reached out to touch her, he might get shocked.

Bellamy waits until eight to go upstairs and pull the quilt off O’s shoulders, because he is the nicest brother of all time. Mrs. Griffin wakes up around six, downs two cups of coffee before filling a tumbler with a third, makes small talk with each of them cordially enough, and then heads to work dressed like a lawyer.

“Isn’t it Sunday?” he asks, and Clarke just shrugs, stirring her coffee with a frozen chocolate spoon she’d pulled from the freezer. She gave Raven one made out of caramel, and Bellamy’s was cacao.

“She goes in to the hospital every day,” she says. “Or tries to, at least.” She ducks her head a little, to lick some melted chocolate off the rim of her mug. “I think it makes her feel better, about not being able to help my dad.”

Bellamy isn’t really sure what to say to that—he and Clarke have very different parental issues. His mom went in to the hospital every day so she could put food on the table. Mrs. Griffin goes in to fulfill some sort of moral quota. Even if she decides to retire tomorrow, she probably has enough saving bonds in the bank that they wouldn’t even have to sell the house. Clarke would still be able to go to college, and keep her nice car. She probably doesn’t even realize, and he’s not sure why that’s worse.

He drinks his coffee without a word, because it’s not like it’s her fault she was born rich. He can’t really be mad when she hasn’t done anything wrong. Some people draw the long lots out of life, and he knows that. He’s trying not to be like the guys that he works with—born and raised in the same blue-collar town, complaining about lawyers and dentists and doctors and anyone who went to college, anyone who gets a paycheck bigger than theirs. There’s a certain point, he’s noticed, where the bitterness seems to just swallow them whole, so they can never escape it. He doesn’t want that, for himself. He wants to get out.

Bellamy waits until Raven’s awake, before corralling O out to Clarke’s car, so she can give them a ride home. Just as they’re leaving, a lime green Kia—the kind from that commercial, with the hamsters—pulls into the drive. Wells steps out, looking like an ad for J C Penny, and he waves at them before walking into Clarke’s house.

“What’s he doing here?” Bellamy asks, mildly concerned. Raven doesn’t do well with human interaction until at least noon, and four pots of coffee. “She’s gonna kill him.”

“She called him,” Clarke shrugs, and he tries to work out the math in his head, and figure the best time to make fun of Raven about it. Probably never. She watches a lot of _Breaking Bad_ ; she’d know how to get rid of his body.

Clarke pulls up to the curb outside his house, and he leans over to swipe a kiss to her mouth while O blows an enormous raspberry in the backseat.

“You guys didn’t used to be gross,” she complains as they hop up on the porch—there’s a perfectly good set of stairs off to the side, that they never bother using.

Bellamy grins a little, private, to himself. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’re making up for it.”

He calls Miller, because normally he’d call Raven, but she’s clearly out of commission.

“What?” Miller says, instead of hello. Bellamy knows that deep down, Miller is a very emotional and sensitive person.

“I have to get Clarke a Christmas present,” he says, and there’s a little huff on the other end of the line.

“Congratulations. What the fuck do you want me to do about it?”

“Come shopping with me,” Bellamy says. There’s a pause, so he adds “It’s _Sunday_. What else do you have to do?”

Miller gives a sigh, which means Bellamy’s won. “Fine. I’ll meet you downtown in twenty minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Bellamy hedges, since he’s already dressed and itching to get out of the house. Objectively, he knows he’s got over a week to find Clarke’s present, but he also knows he’ll just obsess over it until he does.

“Fuck off,” Miller says, smooth as anything, and hangs up.

They start off in the book shop, mainly because Bellamy knows if he drags Miller to one of the hand-made jewelry stores on the block, he’ll just leave. Books seem easier, anyway; Clarke likes to read, and he doesn’t have to worry about sizes, or style, or anything. They’re cheaper, too.

But the store is one of those niche ones, with mostly a bunch of books-turned-movies, and Norman Rockwell posters. The rest of the shops fluctuate between cafés with odd-colored walls, and pottery barns, with a few boutiques they can’t afford, dotted in between. Downtown Ark isn’t very large; just a few streets at the most, with cobblestoned sidewalks and big iron lampposts and a lot of signs advertising how old everything is, even though comparatively, everything in America is pretty new.

“Seriously?” Miller asks when Bellamy picks up a throw pillow, with the image of a black cat stitched on the front.

It looks sort of like Clarke’s, who had proved pretty elusive during his time at her house. He’d only just barely glimpsed it rounding a corner, a blur of black with little dots of green for eyes. Apparently Clarke had named it Eye In the Dark when she was eight, and her dad brought it home for her birthday. It’s a weird name for a cat, but O still collected the little anoles that liked to climb up the outside of their house in the spring, and she named each one of them Benjamin, and he’s still not sure why.

“What?” he shrugs, defensive. “She’d like it.” She would, he knows. He suspects Clarke’s the type of person who loves anything anyone ever gives her, simply because it’s a gift. But he wants her to love his present for what it actually is, and maybe a little because he’s the one who got it for her, so he puts the pillow back.

“How long do you think this will take?” Miller asks, picking the golden raisins out of his scone so he can eat them last. Bellamy kicks him a little under the table—he’s just bought the guy lunch, after all, which included the ridiculously expensive scone and some fancy macchiato he’s pretty sure Miller only ordered to be a dick. He’s not even drinking it.

“Where else do you have to be?” he asks, and then feels a little bad about it, because what if Miller actually has a social life? It’s not like he’d actually _know_. Their only interactions outside of school are when they end up at the same party and sometimes get drunk together. Bellamy’s pretty sure this is the first time they’ve hung out sober.

“Monty said he might be hanging out at the library,” Miller says, clearly trying for nonchalance.

Bellamy grins. “Yeah? You guys back on again?” The last time he and Monty spoke, the couple was taking another break, so Monty could focus on stressing over his AP finals and cramming.

Miller shrugs. “It’s just hanging out at the library.”

“Right,” Bellamy says, still grinning, and Miller throws a raisin at his face.

He’s almost ready to just give up and search for something online, when he sees it. Hung up on the inside of a shop window, on one of those lick-and-stick plastic hooks from Staples. Glinting in the sunlight, a shiny pale gold. It’s a heart, but it’s somehow different from all the other cheesy heart pendants sold fifty percent off around Valentine’s Day.

For one, it’s very, very old. The metal is ribboned, a hundred tiny layers all melted together into shape. They twist around and around, so when he finally picks it up, it catches the light a dozen different ways with each angle. Otherwise, it’s fairly plain; just a soft, little gold heart, barely the size of the pad of his thumb. Just about the size as Clarke’s crown pendant, and the same shade—though it doesn’t have the little diamonds, set inside. That’s just as well, though. He probably wouldn’t be able to afford it, if it did.

“Really? A heart?” Miller teases, but Bellamy shrugs him off and goes to check out at the counter. It’s a little more than he’d wanted to spend, but not much. Honestly, he’s surprised it’s as cheap as it is, but he’s not about to question it.

“She’ll like it,” he defends, tucking it safely in his pocket, wrapped in the newspaper by the cashier. The chain it comes with is cheap, flimsy metal that kinks easily, but he figures Clarke can just wear it with her crown.

“Did you want to get anything for Monty?” he asks, feeling a little guilty that he’s only just now considered it. But Miller shakes his head.

“Nah, I already got him some weird Magic: The Gathering collectable shit.”

Miller likes to talk shit about things like _Magic_ , but Bellamy knows for a fact that he started playing at the Game Stop on Saturdays, before he even _met_ Monty.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” he asks. They’re sitting on one of the cement benches outside the library. Miller’s reading some true crime novel, and Bellamy’s working on a needlepoint he started a couple of days ago; it’s a gryphon, with some Celtic-looking pattern around the border. Lots of twisty triangles, which are a pain. “When Monty keeps asking for a break?”

To be fair, he knows a good number of the breaks have been because of Miller, like when he went off to some JROTC summer camp, and didn’t want Monty to feel held down. Or when he went to visit his mom in California, and wanted to be free just in case he ran into Ezra Miller, or something.

Miller glances up from his page, to frown down at Bellamy’s stitching. “Fucking _seriously_?” he sighs. Miller _hates_ sewing, and doesn’t understand why anyone would want to do it in their spare time. “Nah, it doesn’t bother me. It’s,” he frowns even more, leveling a steady glare at Bellamy, which seems fair. They don’t really _do_ this; heart-to-hearts. They don’t talk about much outside of Marvel and the few _Supernatural_ reruns they’ve both happened to have seen. “Sometimes we each need our space, and we both get that. I know it’s not because of something I did, or because he wants to see other people, and he knows that too. It’d probably be worse, if we didn’t take time off every now and then. We’d both feel smothered.”

“You don’t think it’s, I don’t know, selfish?” Bellamy waves the hand with the needle, and Miller flinches away.

“What’s happening right now?” he asks, suspicious. “Now that you’re in a relationship, you’re suddenly an expert? No, I don’t think it’s selfish. It’d be selfish if I forced him to stay with me when he doesn’t want to, or if he guilted me into not taking breaks.” He shuts his book with a sigh, apparently giving up on it. “What about you and Clarke? Is that what this is about—you want to talk about your girlfriend, so you ease into it by prying into my sex life?”

“I was prying into your _love_ life,” Bellamy corrects. “I’m a romantic.”

Miller snorts. “Right. So how’s your sex life, Blake? Questions, comments, concerns?”

Bellamy stiffens a little, and he knows Miller sees it, but he doesn’t say anything. Miller knows he’s fucked around a bit, with a few girls from their school. It’s one of the safe topics between them—Bellamy knows Miller’s gotten a blow job in the handicapped stall of the library bathroom, and Miller knows Bellamy lost his virginity to Roma, their sophomore year. They high fived over it.

But he isn’t sure what to tell him about Clarke—they’ve been secretly dating for some time now, but he doesn’t actually know how far she’s gone, with _anyone_. He’s not about to say they’ve been fucking for weeks, but if he says they haven’t done _anything_ , Miller might get suspicious.

He shrugs, a little lopsided. “She wants to go slow.” It seems like the safest answer, all things considered. He might talk to Clarke about it later, if he can figure out how to bring it up in a way that doesn’t feel gross. He doesn’t really want to audit her sexual history or anything, but they should probably come up with a story they can both stick to.

Miller nods, apparently satisfied. Odds are, he didn’t even care in the first place. Bellamy isn’t sure why he worried; he could’ve said he and Clarke have only made out on her front porch—Miller wouldn’t have given a shit.

“So did Monty,” Miller grins a little wolfishly, because Bellamy knows that story too; how Monty was a virgin, and not really sure about sex at all, and Miller agreed to go at his pace. But he and Monty, as it turns out, are _ridiculous_ , and ended up having sex at Miller’s brother’s cabin, on his birthday.

That was when they had their first break, because Monty had a minor existential crisis over it, trying to decide if liking sex meant he wasn’t asexual, and if he wasn’t asexual, then what he actually _was_. It was a bit of a mess, for a while. Miller burned _so_ many pies in Home Ec.

Bellamy rolls his eyes, going back to his needlepoint. He’s thinking about adding a quote in the space at the bottom, but he’s not sure which one. Something by Drake, probably. Maybe Adele. “Yeah, well Clarke actually _means_ it. We’re going slow—it’s nice, actually.” And it is. It’s not that he doesn’t want to fuck Clarke—because, _god,_ he does. If she were to booty call him right now, at three pm on a Sunday, he’d just ask where. But it’s nice, knowing that’s not all they’re doing. He’s not really used to making out with a girl and then actually wanting to hang out with her. And it’s nice, knowing she’s not just trying to get something out of him.

It’d be better, if their relationship wasn’t _fake_ , but. He’ll take what he can get.

“I’m happy for you,” Miller says, and actually sounds like he means it.

“Thanks, man,” Bellamy says, and then Monty shows up in his mom’s silver minivan, and Bellamy has very little interest in third wheeling, trying not to notice when Monty inevitably give his sort-of boyfriend a blowjob under one of the desks in the nonfiction section. So he bumps Miller’s fist, and hugs Monty, because Monty is a hugger, and then heads home to make sure O’s eaten lunch.

She hasn’t, of course, so he makes her a packet of oodles of noodles, with the salsa like she likes.

He’s wondering what the etiquette is, with calling your fake girlfriend—Raven’s probably still there, and maybe Wells, so Clarke’s probably busy. But on the other hand, maybe if Raven and Wells are distracting each other, she can slip away to talk.

He’s still tapping his phone absently on his knee, debating, when it rings.

Clarke’s picture beams out at him—he took it at the first tournament, and she’s holding her trophy with one hand, with the other slung around Raven’s shoulders, caught off guard.

“Yes, princess?” he says, just to be a dick. Clarke huffs a little.

“My mom called social services,” she says, clearly annoyed. “They said Raven can stay with me until tomorrow, but then she has to go to the group home—even though we have plenty of space, and they can just give us the paperwork or whatever to fill out—but, no. Bureaucracy wins, again.”

She sounds actually upset about it, and Bellamy sits up all the way on the couch, where he’d sprawled after gorging himself on hot noodles. “Did they say why they won’t let her stay?”

Clarke snorts. “Because they’re idiots,” she huffs, angry. “And because we’re not registered to foster, but—I looked it up, and it’s just some paperwork, honestly! Then there’s a forty-two hour wait period, but it wouldn’t be any different than her sleeping over, back when Nygel was around.”

“Where’s Raven?”

There’s a pause, as Clarke goes quiet. Then, “I don’t know,” she admits. “She left after my mom told us. She said something about seeing Wick about a car she can borrow, since Nygel took hers.”

“I hope it explodes while she’s in it,” Bellamy says darkly, and Clarke laughs a little, dry and humorless.

“Right next to a speed trap,” she agrees, “So the cops can arrest her on the spot.”

“Okay—I’ll go find Raven. You keep searching for loopholes with your mom. If anyone can beat the system, it’s you. You’re practically a criminal mastermind.”

This time, her laugh is real, and he counts it as a victory. “Yeah, that’s me. The new Wiki Leaks.”

“You’ve got this, princess,” he says, low, so she’ll know he means it.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I do. Go find her.”

Bellamy starts with Wick, since that’s where Raven said she’d be. He doesn’t actually remember how he got Wick’s phone number, just that it was long enough ago that it should have changed by now, but never has.

“Kyle Wick, Esquire,” he answers, cheery as usual. “How are we saving the planet, today?”

“Have you seen Raven?” Bellamy asks, skipping pleasantries altogether. He can handle Wick in small doses, chaperoned by Raven, but they’ve never actually been friends, themselves.

“Yeah, she came by earlier to pick up the DeVille. Why?”

“So she’s gone now?” Bellamy clarifies, mumbling a curse. Indra never lets him borrow her car, because he’s not on her insurance and she doesn’t want to pay the extra premium. Also, he doesn’t actually have his license, yet. “Did she say where she was going?”

“Nah, man, sorry,” Wick says, sounding just a little more genuine than usual. “Did you try calling her?”

Bellamy swallows back the impulse to yell at him. “Yeah, she didn’t pick up. Thanks anyway.”

“Sure. I hope you find her. Ciao.”

Bellamy stares at his phone for a moment, in disbelief. _Of course_ Wick says the word _ciao_. He probably does that tongue rolling thing whenever he sees a girl he likes, too. He might own a trilby. It seems like a real possibility.

Bellamy’s just begun considering hitch hiking to the aviary, where he knows Raven likes to go stare at the birds stuck in their cages and feel better about herself, when he realizes he already knows where she is.

It’s just two blocks away. Barely a ten minute walk. The sun’s beginning to set, washing the sky out in periwinkle, and the wind’s kicking up, but he ignores it.

He finds her sitting on top of their dugout, the one they claimed when they were kids fighting all the other kids over any high ground they could find. Things like that were simple back then; whoever was left standing, won. Nothing else really mattered.

She came here after Finn, too. And then, a few months later, after Wick.

The actual field hasn’t been used in years. People dump their old, unusable tires here, now. There are dozens of them, half buried in sand and grown over with weeds and dying dandelions and those little purple flowers that are just starting to wilt. The dugout is only a little bit better off, made of rundown sandstone and cinderblocks painted some variation of desert beige. The roof is made of that crumbly asphalt stuff that goes on houses, and turns hot and sticky in the sun. It’s cold now, though, and Raven’s shivering in her threadbare sweater, when he climbs up beside her. He’s not sure how she managed it on her own; her cane’s sitting beside her, but he doesn’t see a makeshift step stool anyway, or even a pile of old tires she might have climbed up. It must have taken her hours. Her arms are probably numb.

“She told you,” she says, because she knows, already. She’s just saving him from deciding whether or not to bring it up.

“Yeah,” he sighs, pinching some of the asphalt off between his fingers, and tossing it out at the field. He loses sight of it in the tall grass and burdock.

“The closest home is two cities over,” Raven says, and when he looks over, her face is pinched, like she’s trying not to scream. Or cry. Or both.

“That’s bullshit,” he says, and she barks out a surprised laugh. “Clarke’s gonna figure out a way to keep you here.”

Raven sighs, picking at a scab on her knee through the hole in her jeans. There are the little white strings poking through, and she picks at those too, pulling them until the hole stretches another few inches. “She shouldn’t,” she says, glaring out at the sun, like some sort of staring contest that she’ll win through spite alone. “It’s complicating her life.”

“Maybe she likes complicated,” he says, nudging her shoulder so she’ll shove him away. Even when she’s upset, Raven has very little patience for physical affection. Clarke seems to be an exception, which he’s trying very hard not to feel jealous about. And now there’s Wells, too. “And so does Jaha, it looks like.”

Raven turns her glare on him, now, but the damage is done, and he’s grinning. Raven only gets this angry when she’s feeling emotions she doesn’t know what to do with, like a crush.

“Fuck off,” she grunts, and he just grins wider.

“What’s your deal with him, anyway?” he asks, genuinely curious. “I thought you _fucking hated_ him?”

Raven squints out at the field of corroded tires and spindly weeds, like she’s trying to figure them out. “I was wrong,” she says, quiet, with none of the air of _yeah I was wrong, but so were you for believing me_ that she usually has. “He’s nice. He’s—easy.”

“What, and I’m not?”

She makes a face. “Blake, you are a giant pain in my ass and you know it.” She shoves his arm and then stretches her own out, waggling her cane for emphasis. “Now help me down, like a gentleman.”

He ends up carrying her to the car—an ancient thing that somehow looks even _worse_ than her old one, which he didn’t think was possible—both, because she is massively lazy, and because the weeds obscure a lot of debris that she might trip over, and he’d rather be safe than sorry.

To his surprise, when Raven turns the key, instead of The Ramones blasting out at his face about teen angst and hating their parents, it’s The Dickies’s cover of _Silent Night_. Bellamy stares at her incredulously, while she pointedly looks at the road.

“You hate Christmas carols,” he says, and she shrugs.

“This one grew on me.”

“Clarke showed you,” he crows, delighted, and Raven scowls. She likes to pretend she doesn’t care about things like friendship, and he’s not really sure why. Raven cares about so many things, and she always cares a lot. “Oh my god, did she make you a Punk Christmas mix tape? She totally did.”

“Fuck you,” Raven says, mild. “You’re just jealous she didn’t make you one.”

“If she made you one, she definitely made me one,” he says, and he’s surprised to find he believes it. That’s just the kind of person Clarke is—she wouldn’t make something for one person, and no one else. She probably brought in valentine’s for the whole class, when she was a kid. “And mine’s probably better, because it’s romantic and shit.”

Raven snorts. “ _So_ romantic, and shit.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, as some mosh pit version of _Deck the Halls_ starts up, with what sounds like an electric violin.

They’re almost exactly half-and-half, between their neighborhood and Clarke’s, when the engine sputters and suddenly dies. There isn’t even enough time for Raven to slow down and steer off to the side of the road. One minute, they’re driving, and the next, everything is filled with smoke, and they’re sitting ducks in the middle of the fast lane.

” _Fuck_ ,” Raven shouts, slamming the heels of her hands on the wheel before twisting herself so she can stomp out of the car. She gets the hood up in record time, which just lets out more smoke, while Bellamy watches. He’s learned the hard way to just stay out of Raven’s way, when it comes to car troubles. She doesn’t really get road rage while driving, and his working theory is that all that unleashed anger just sits in her belly and waits for when the car inevitably breaks down, so she can release all of it then.

“Fuck!” she calls again, at the sky this time, shaking her fist like in _Gone With the Wind_. Then she hits the bumper a few times with her cane, and slams some things around near the engine, and pulls out the oil stick, flinging it around, which just makes everything smell like oil. She throws a few metal bolts, like skipping rocks, and Bellamy hopes they won’t need them later.

Finally, once she’s settled down enough to admit there’s no fixing what’s broken, without buying half a dozen brand new parts—except _not_ brand new, but vintage, off of ebay or some obscure car parts site or something—Bellamy manages to wheel the car off the pavement, and Raven calls Clarke.

“She won’t mind,” he says, sidling up to lean beside her, while Raven glares out at the world. “Clarke loves rescuing damsels like us in distress.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, sounding more tired than ever. Chunks of hair have escaped her pony tail, and he’s not sure when she last showered, since she’s still wearing all the same clothes, and her hair looks limp and knotted. “But I hate being rescued. Just once, _I_ want to be the hero. Or, better yet, the dragon. Dragons are more badass.”

“You’re definitely the dragon,” Bellamy says, ticking the reasons off on his fingers. “You always bite my head off, you could easily breathe fire, I’m pretty sure, you have a tough and scaly exterior, and you hoard things.”

“You’d be a terrible knight,” Raven sniffs. “You lost the armor I made you, like, the first night.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “But I could be a mage or something. There are mages in those stories, right? Or maybe I’d be the prince that stumbled into a trap and got turned into a bear, or something.”

“Yeah, you would,” she decides, and he’s not sure whether or not she means it as a compliment.

Clarke’s BMW pulls up beside them as the last of the orange seeps from the sky. Bellamy opens the passenger door, only to find the entire floor covered in cans of spray paint, all different colors, rolling and clanking into each other.

“Um,” he says, and Clarke rolls her eyes a little, reaching over to tug on his sleeve, so he’ll slide in. He has to keep his feet raised a couple of inches, so he doesn’t step on any cans.

“What’s with the art supplies?” Raven asks, as Clarke pulls back out into traffic.

“Mom and I got ahold of your social worker,” she says, like that should explain everything. When neither Raven nor Bellamy respond, she sighs. “Dr. Tsing? Anyway, she said she can’t get us the paperwork, because she’s so bogged down with assignments for the next several months. So we offered to come get it ourselves, but she said it _wasn’t done_. Like that’s a reason!”

Bellamy glances in the rearview mirror, and sees Raven staring determinedly out the window, swallowing thickly as she watches their town melt away while they drive. “Yeah, she’s a bitch. Thanks for trying, but that still doesn’t explain your Picasso Graffiti.”

Clarke’s grin looks wicked in the dim light cast by the street lamps, fading as quickly as it comes as the needle inches its way up her speedometer. She’s beginning to cross over the speed limit, and she doesn’t even seem to care.

Bellamy kind of likes this new, dangerous-looking Clarke. More than he probably should. She feels electric, like if he reached out to touch her, he might get shocked.

“It does, actually,” she says, and he suddenly realizes they’re not headed towards Phoenix Park at all, but instead towards the corporate district—high rises and law firms and government buildings. Including the social services office, he’s willing to bet.

Clarke turns into a darkened parking lot, looking sullen and empty, pavement so shiny and new that it reflects the moon back at itself. “I thought we should give her a message.”

Bellamy doesn’t realize there’s another car here, until Clarke pulls up right beside it—a Kia, looking dark green in the night. Wells is waiting just beside it, looking nervous and fidgeting, while Murphy leans up against the tail lights, smoking a cigarette and exhaling the smoke through his nose. Murphy does most of what he does, because he thinks it’ll make him look cool and dangerous.

He stubs out the filter, as they step out of Clarke’s car, and Wells is on them in no time.

“This is a terrible idea,” he says, somber and serious. “And extremely illegal, Clarke—this is nothing like Cage Wallace’s door.”

“I know,” she shrugs, pulling a pile of bandanas from the backseat, all different patterns. She hands Wells a pink one that’s covered in triangles that might be party hats. Bellamy’s has orange and blue polka dots, and Raven’s is black with white swirls. Clarke’s is a pure baby blue, with little gold clovers at the corners, and she ties it around her nose like a bank robber. “What are you doing here?” she asks Murphy, clearly distressed that she doesn’t have a handkerchief for him.

“I called him,” Wells shrugs. “I thought we might need a seasoned criminal.”

“Thanks,” Murphy drawls, and Bellamy wonders if he’s here for Wells, or if he’s here for the vandalism. It’s a toss-up—most likely, both.

“I am a criminal,” Clarke says, haughtily, and she certainly looks the part with her hair pulled back and her face covered, a can of spray paint in each hand. When Bellamy catches her eyes, they look like lightning.

“We really shouldn’t do this,” Wells says again, and Raven whirls on him.

“If you’re too chicken shit, just go home,” she snarls. “We don’t need you, so if you don’t want to be here, leave.”

There’s a tense moment where no one says anything, and Raven and Wells don’t even blink, too wired to look away from each other. Bellamy’s sure Raven will break first—even she has to know that was too much—but instead, Wells speaks, voice low and even.

“I don’t want to be here,” he says, words carefully calculated before he lets them out. “But I want to be with you. I’ll always be with you. But this is stupid. I just think you should know.”

Objectively, Bellamy knows Wells is referring to all of them, using the collective _you_ , but. It’s hard to really remember that, when he’s staring at Raven so intensely.

Apparently she feels the same way, because now she’s going red all over, and coughing a little, like she’s trying to break the moment, but it’s just too thick.

Finally, Murphy says “I hate to interrupt, but are we doing this, or what?”

“We’re doing it,” Clarke says, firm, and starts handing out the spray cans, two to a person. “Just follow my lead.”

They do, trailing after her around the corner of one of the far buildings, using the flashlights on their phones to light their way. Murphy’s using an extra scarf Clarke had, tied around his face. It’s pink, and glitters, with little tassels that jiggle when he breathes.

Clarke starts, with enormous letters, round around the sides but jagged at the edges, crammed in over and on top of each other so the whole thing will fit. When she’s done outlining, she leaves it up to the rest of them to fill them in, with colors bleeding into colors because they don’t really know what they’re doing, or how to hold the can, or how to hold the nozzle so it goes all the way down and sticks there.

It’s easier than Bellamy’s expecting, once he forgets to jump at every sound, or look around wildly whenever he sees a new shadow. His fingers start to go numb after a while, so he switches hands, and his coloring becomes worse, but eventually they finish, and stand back to look at what it is they’ve just made.

_TSING CARES MORE ABOUT HER CHRISTMAS BONUS THAN HELPING THOSE IN NEED._

It’s not exactly Banksy, although Clarke did add several ravens around the edges, for some flair. It’s not too obvious, who the message is from, either, so he’s hoping no one will think to check local teen records, for recent crimes involving graffiti.

He almost doesn’t notice Raven’s reaction, until he sees her slip her hand into Clarke’s, quiet and smooth, like a thank you.

“Still think we shouldn’t have done it?” he asks Wells, who is clearly trying to seem stern about it, but the corners of his mouth give him away.

“Yes,” he says, steadfast. “But…if it helps, it’ll have been worth it.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Bellamy asks, and follows Wells’s gaze to Raven, leaning her head on Clarke’s shoulder, even though she’s a little too tall for it to be comfortable.

“Still worth it,” Wells says, sighing. “But still illegal,” he adds, just in case they forgot.

“Well now you’re a criminal too,” Murphy says from the sidelines. Even though he’s just helped them vandalize a government building, he’s still a little distant, off on the edges. “How does it feel?”

“Murphy, shut up,” Raven says, rolling her eyes, as Clarke leads them back to the parking lot. “Everybody knows your cousin stole that ATM, not you.”

“I fucking helped,” Murphy sniffs, petulant.

“No one doubts that you’ve broken laws, before,” Wells says, placating, and Raven makes a noise of outrage.

“ _One_ law—and it was an _accessory_! Hardly Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Well fuck you too,” Murphy says, not missing a beat, and lights another cigarette. Raven looks ready to snatch it up and put it out on his retina.

“Thanks for the help, guys,” Clarke calls, as polite a goodbye as she can come up with, and Wells steers Murphy towards the Kia.

“Any time,” Murphy sneers, but Bellamy has a feeling he might actually mean it.

“Fuck him,” Raven snaps, sliding into the BMW. Wells is pulling out and away, so there’s no way Murphy can hear her, but Bellamy almost expects him to stick his head out the window to shout _fuck you too!_ “He’s such a—a—” she pauses, trying to come up with an insult deserving of his name. Bellamy’s heard Raven refer to John Murphy as many different and intricate things, that it’ll be hard to top.

“A fucking fuckweasel,” she decides, and he notches the line up into his list of Top Five Raven Versus Murphy Insults.

“He helped us paint hate mail on the side of your social worker’s office,” Clarke points out.

“He’s still an ass,” Raven says, and there’s really no arguing that, so they don’t.

Clarke heads back to Bellamy’s neighborhood, because apparently _two_ nights of him sleeping over is a little too much for Abby Griffin—which is fine with him, to be honest. He’s not sure he would survive another night with Clarke pressed up right against him, warm and happy, and letting him kiss her neck.

She pulls up outside his house, and the upstairs light is on which means Octavia must be up watching old VHS tapes of _The Twilight Zone_ , because the tiny ancient box TV in her room has a built-in VHS player but no cable.

He steps out of the car, and to his surprise, Clarke steps out after him, rounding the hood until they’re face to face. Raven is asleep in the backseat, or pretending to be, to be nice, even though he knows she’ll give him shit about it in the morning. Even if nothing happens, she’ll give him shit.

But looking down at Clarke now—her eyelids covered in some glittery, smoke-colored shadow, her mouth painted dark red, like she dressed for some femme fatale role, for the night—he knows that whatever’s about to happen, won’t be _nothing_.

“So I know for our first date, you had your heart set on making out in the movies,” she starts, and she’s got wearing a half-smirk that makes his mouth go dry. “But how do you feel about a fancy dinner for free, instead?” She’s looking a little bit hopeful, so Bellamy picks his words carefully.

“That depends—what kind of dinner is it? Will there be lobster? I’ve never actually had lobster, but I hear it’s supposed to be fancy.”

“Lobster is super fancy,” Clarke agrees, clearly relieved. “And it will be there, along with a mountain of chocolate fondue, which is the _best_. It’s another benefit for my mom, but I figure we can probably just hang out at the table, eat a bunch of free, fancy food, and then go make out in the coat room or something.”

Bellamy laughs, curling a hand around the back of her neck, because it fits there. She shivers a little and steps in closer, tucking her hands up the back of his shirt, to warm them on the skin of his spine.

“You did promise me you rock a mean suit,” Clarke says, leaning her head back so her chin digs into his chest a little, in a good way. “I expect you to deliver.”

“Tell me you don’t think I’d look hot in a suit,” he grins, and she hums, standing up on her toes to press a kiss to his jaw. He can feel her lipstick rubbing off on him, and he’s doing his best not to get turned on. She’s pressed up against him, so there’s no way she wouldn’t feel it, and he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

It seems as good a segway as anything, so he says “Miller asked how far we’ve gone.” He feels her tense up in his arms, so he quickly adds “I told him we were going slow.”

Clarke pulls back to study him. “Do you want to go slow?”

Bellamy takes a minute to wonder if it’s a trick question, before deciding she probably wouldn’t ask a trick question. “I want to go at your pace.” It’s true enough; if she sets the pace, he doesn’t have to worry about pressuring her, or anything. He still doesn’t even know how far she’s gone—as far as he knows, he might be the first.

Clarke hums a little, to herself, like she’s thinking things over. Then, bright as anything, she says “So maybe we’ll have sex in the coat room, instead.”

Bellamy chokes on absolutely nothing. She beams at him, stepping in to give him a kiss that’s way too short, before sliding back into her car, calling one last _Bye, Bell!_ and waving, before driving off.

He goes up to his room in a daze, not even bothering to check up on O—it’s Christmas Break, so it doesn’t really matter how late she stays up, and anyway he wouldn’t be able to properly pester her in the state he’s in, anyhow. Bellamy collapses onto his mattress, staring up at the old plastic glow-in-the-dark stars tacked up on his ceiling with that blue rubbery gunk, back when he was just a kid. He’s transferred most of them to O’s room by now, but a few of them just refused to peel off, still a handful of pitiful blobs of pale green when he turns the lights off.

Raven might be moving two cities over, within a couple of days. He’s not sure where she’ll end up after the holidays, when they finally find some foster parent—or maybe she’ll get a couple, maybe even a few other kids. Just enough to not feel overwhelming. He’s not sure if she’ll like that better, but. Almost anything’s better than Nygel, he knows, which is why he feels so shitty, for wishing she hadn’t ever left. At least when she was here, he knew Raven was, too.

And it’s why he feels so shitty about Clarke; because Raven might be moving, but all he can think about is the waxy smudge of lipstick still stuck to his skin, and her little hands against his back, and her smile when she said _we might have sex in the coat room_ —jesus christ. He’s pretty sure his brain is still a little bit melted.

He’ll need a suit. And maybe condoms, but the suit feels a little safer to think about.

It’s so fucking stupid, but—he misses her. He just saw her, he knows, but it was so little time, and there were a lot of other people, and they were doing something that does not lend itself to holding hands or kissing, which are his two favorite things to do with Clarke. His third favorite is just talking, but they didn’t get to do much of that, either.

He’s debating sending a text—but what kind? Romantic or cheesy or some obscure history fact that he thinks she’ll enjoy? How long should it be? Should he add a joke, to keep things casual? Would _I miss you_ come off too strong?

This is why he needs Raven, in her usual place curled up by his bed in a mound of blankets, calling him and idiot and giving him a bunch of horrible pick up lines that make him look like a fucking gentleman in comparison.

Then his phone rings, and he goes to answer it so quickly that he drops it and almost ends the call.

“Hello?” he asks, a little breathless from having to lunge to catch it when it fell.

“Hey,” Clarke says, sounding just as uncertain, before finally just huffing a small laugh. “I know this sounds dumb, but. I just, um, wanted to hear you.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, leaning back, and his mouth actually _hurts_ , he’s grinning so wide. “I know what you mean.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know it does,” Clarke rolls her eyes, and he’s not really sure what does it, but suddenly a switch is flipped inside both of them, and they’re no longer thinking about Raven. They’re not really thinking about anything, really, and Clarke swings her leg over his lap at the same time he tugs her in, almost desperate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> little baby chapter because i'm trying to get back into the groove of this story.
> 
> also, hey, [fuel my narcissism](http://tierannasaurusrex.tumblr.com/)

Objectively, Bellamy knows that their midnight misdemeanor probably didn’t influence Raven’s case, but it’s hard not to feel a little smug about it, when Clarke shows up on his doorstep Tuesday morning, Christmas Eve, the day Raven’s supposed to be heading out to the group home.

Except Clarke’s beaming up at him, still looking rumpled from sleep, with messy hair thrown up haphazardly in a bun, and a pair of black sweatpants made out of some shiny material, that she’s stuffed into a pair of brown fuzzy boots, with pompoms on the zippers.

“She’s staying,” Clarke says, laughing, and swings her arms around his shoulders, so he has to lean down for her to hug.

“She’s staying,” she says again, quiet and giddy, right in his ear.

For his part, Bellamy’s still blinking the sleep crust from his eyes, having only woken up at the sound of her knocking, and then ambled downstairs, expecting the UPS guy or something. Instead, he now has an armful of Clarke, which is a very large improvement.

“I knew you’d do it,” he says, grinning, because—his best friend is _staying_ , thanks to his kind-of girlfriend, and it’s almost Christmas, and everything finally feels like it’s going right.

“My mom did most of the paperwork,” she admits, slipping back down so she can see him. “She threatened to take them to court over it.” But she’s worrying her lip a little, and there’s that crinkle in between her brows, that makes his stomach fall.

“What is it?”

Clarke sighs. “They could only make us her legal guardians for Christmas Break,” she admits. “They’ll have a real foster family ready by January fourth, and she’ll have to go live with them. Mom’s trying to fight it, but—it can take months to be fully registered to foster. She thinks maybe we’ll be able to do it by the summer.”

Bellamy swallows, nodding a little dumbly. “And, the foster family they have? Where are they? Are they local?”

“They have to be in the county,” she says, but she sounds doubtful. “But that could be miles away, farther than the group home even.”

“How’s Raven?”

“She’s just happy she can stay for the next two weeks,” Clarke sighs, and he leads her in to the den, because they probably shouldn’t have this conversation in the open front door. They sink down on the dingy floral sofa, and he’s only a little gratified when she curls up into him immediately. “I’m trying not to make things harder on her, by talking about it too much.”

“Yeah, Reyes is more of the _ignore my problems until they go away_ type,” he agrees.

“I just don’t know how to fix it,” Clarke says, frowning down at her hands, like they’ve personally offended her. He reaches over to curl his fingers in with hers.

“You don’t have to save the world, Clarke,” he says, a little exasperated, and she huffs a laugh.

“You still think I’m some sort of saint,” she teases. “I’m not. I don’t even care about most of the world, just the people I like in it.”

“Does that include me?” he grins, and she hits him with one of Indra’s Christmas pillows, dug out of the tiny attic crawlspace; green-and-red scratchy material stretched over a bunch of stuffing that smells like pine and a little mildew.

“You know it does,” Clarke rolls her eyes, and he’s not really sure what does it, but suddenly a switch is flipped inside both of them, and they’re no longer thinking about Raven. They’re not really thinking about anything, really, and Clarke swings her leg over his lap at the same time he tugs her in, almost desperate.

This kiss is heated, and rushed, and not like any of the others. He slides his hand down to rest on her hip, where he can feel the band of her underwear through her pants, and Clarke grinds down against his crotch shamelessly. She has a hand rucked up under his shirt, and her fingers are freezing but he doesn’t even care, as she rubs the warm skin of his stomach.

She’s licking into his mouth, warm and wet and perfect, and he just barely bites the tip of her tongue. The whimper she makes sends a shudder down through his body, and his toes curl into the thick yarn of the carpet.

“Bell,” she whispers, and he tries to remember if he still has any condoms in the stash he keeps by his bed.

“Princess,” he says, just to piss her off a little, but instead she shivers, and ducks her head to give a tiny little moan in the crook of his neck.

“You like that,” he grins, disbelieving, dragging a hand up the back of her shirt, to stroke her spine.

She kisses him, probably to shut him up, and pulls back with a glare.

“I—” The sound of a throat clearing in the doorway makes them both jump, and the pads of his fingers dig into her thighs in surprise.

Indra’s standing there, looking at them with an equal measure of disdain and apathy. She has a wine glass filled with what looks like minute maid, but is probably mostly vodka, and raises a single thin eyebrow.

“Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?” she drawls, taking a sip, and Clarke scrambles off of Bellamy’s lap to sit a respectable three feet away from him.

“Uh, no ma’am,” Bellamy says, risking a quick glance at Clarke, who’s gone bright pink and is staring at the black screen of the television.

“You must be Clarke,” Indra says, sounding a little amused, or at least more than he’s ever seen her. Clarke glances at him, clearly distressed.

“Yes, Clarke Griffin. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Indra hums and gives them each a final Look before ambling back down the hall, towards the dining room, to get drunk and watch Spanish soap operas, with the subtitles that don’t even work.

Bellamy waits for her footsteps to fade, before he flings his head against the back of the sofa, and groans. “Sorry,” he offers, tilting his head to look at her. She’s warped by the angle, like she’s tilted diagonally towards the ceiling, as she grins.

“It takes two to tango,” she hums, leaning forward to give him what he’s pretty sure is supposed to be a chaste kiss. It starts out that way at least, before he reaches up to curl a hand in her messy hair, and she mewls into his mouth when he pulls her in closer.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says, sounding breathless when they pull apart. He’s a little smug about how wrecked she looks. “But you _do_ have your own room, don’t you?”

There’s a beat where he just stares at her, before all but leaping off the couch, dragging Clarke up the stairs behind him. She’s giggling so hard she trips a few times, and he has to catch her before she bangs her knees on the hard steps, but they eventually make it up to his bedroom door.

Bellamy’s never actually been self-conscious of his room before—mainly because the only people who ever go in there are himself, Raven and O, so he’s never really felt the need to impress people with it.

But now _Clarke’s_ here, in the space he’s carved out as his own, and she’s staring around at everything with equal amounts of curiosity and interest. Like she’s actually glad to be here, and she wants to know about the crappy wooden chess set Miller got him when his family visited Spain, or the collection of plastic Treebeard figurines he’s got lined up on his window sill.

She leans over to study the books on his shelf, tracing a finger along the spines as she reads each title, mouth moving with the words. Her hair keeps falling in her eyes, escaping from the bun that he probably messed up when they were kissing. She’s huffing and pushing the strands back behind her ears, but they just fall out again anyway.

“You’re a bit of a nerd, aren’t you?” she asks, but she’s grinning, as she messes with one of the ancient Bionicle’s that Raven made him as a gag gift one year.

Bellamy makes a face, refusing to feel embarrassed, and flops down on the beanbag across the room. The only other option for sitting is his bed, and—he’s not going there, right now. He doesn’t trust himself that much.

“You already knew that,” he says, rolling his eyes as he tries to find a position where his ass isn’t digging into the floor. The beanbag is uncomfortable and mostly flat, from the little white pills leaking out over the years, even though he’s duct taped all the holes up. It’s nearly ten years old, by now.

“Yeah, but now I _know_ it,” Clarke teases, picking her way through the piles of clothes on his floor. They started out in some type of organized order, somewhat, but now they’ve sort of all just merged into one big mess of shirts and jeans that may or may not be dirty.

She walks over to perch on the end of his mattress, which, okay. It’s not like she’s _in_ his bed, or even all that on it. She’s mostly just sitting on the end, with her legs crossed, but it’s more than enough. He will never be able to get the image of Clarke on his comforter out of his mind. Christ, it’ll probably _smell_ like her now, and he’s not sure how gross and creepy it is that that thought turns him on.

Clarke grins down at him, and Bellamy very genuinely hopes she can’t tell what he’s thinking. “I won’t bite.” She pats the edge of the mattress beside her, and he only really hesitates for a moment, because—Clarke Griffin is asking him to sit next to her on his bed. In his room. With the door shut. He’s not a fucking idiot.

He’s barely sat down before she crawls right into his lap and puts her mouth on his neck. “ _Much_ ,” she adds, and he very nearly whimpers. Which would be embarrassing enough, but now she’s pressed up against his crotch, so there’s no hiding how into this he is.

“That was quick,” he mumbles, folding his hands back in her hair just because he can. He feels the flash of her teeth when she grins against his skin.

“I didn’t think I was being _subtle_.” She leans up to kiss him properly, and this time he does whimper, straight into her mouth.

But he’s pretty sure it’s okay, because she sounds just as wrecked, little needy noises in between each breath.

When she grinds down against him, _hard_ , he pulls back a little. “We probably shouldn’t,” he warns, but then she’s mouthing at the skin behind his ear and he can’t _think_. “Octavia,” he says, a little desperate, because thinking of his little sister is really the only thing that might get rid of his hard on.

Clarke sighs and sits up, so they’re not pressed _so_ close together, but she keeps her arms around his neck, just in case. She’s still mostly smiling though, which seems like a good sign.

“I love that you’re such a good brother,” she says, but she sounds like she’s trying to remind herself, and he grins, swiping a kiss to her cheek. His hands are still on her hips though, so he smooths them up her back. He’s trying very hard to not focus on the fact that she just used the word _love_.

Besides, it’s not like she said she actually loves _him_ , and it’s probably too early for that anyway. They’re hardly even actually dating.

“She likes to walk into my room without knocking,” he says. “It’s the only reason I never sleep naked.”

To his immediate gratification, Clarke turns bright red.

“Then we probably shouldn’t make out,” she decides, swinging her leg off his lap, and he has to fight the urge to say _fuck it_ , and just drag her back in.

But the moment’s passed and now she’s looking around his room again, eyes lighting on each surface, like she’s searching for something. Finally, she stops on the chess set, and he recognizes the smirk she’s wearing when she turns back around. It’s her _I’m going to kick you ass and you’re going to like it_ smirk, and it’s really working for him.

“I call turquoise,” he says, and she frowns.

“Turquoise?”

“Turquoise,” he confirms, setting the board up on his bed. “Hungarians are weird.” He doesn’t have an actual desk in his room—he used to just use one of Indra’s wooden TV tables, that fold out, but one of the legs broke and they had to throw it away. So now he mostly just does his school work out in the dining room with O, or on his mattress, using a textbook or something for a hard surface.

The chess pieces, instead of the usual black and white or even black and brown, have been painted a bright turquoise and maroon instead. He’s honestly not sure what the maker was thinking, or Miller when he bought it.

Actually, he does know what Miller was thinking. Probably something like _I’m a dick_.

Clarke’s good, of course, but Bellamy was in the actual chess club in Junior High, so he’s got a leg up on her. But she’s obviously got some sort of strategy, and manages to take out both of his bishops fairly early on.

She also gets really annoyed every time he takes one of her pieces with his pawns—he doesn’t actually set out meaning to keep sniping them with his pawns, but. He likes getting her riled up, sue him.

“How are you so good at this?” she grumbles, when he takes another of her pawns.

“I had no friends in sixth grade,” he shrugs, still grinning smugly. He can’t really help it. She throws one of his captured bishops at his face.

She glares at him. “I’m going to—”

There’s a quick knock on the door and then a pause, and then a second, louder one. And then a large _thud_ , like someone’s kicked it.

Clarke glances at Bellamy in question, and he shrugs. He’s not sure who it is, but it’s not like there are a lot of options. There are only like five people who know where he lives.

“Yeah?” he calls, and there’s a muffled noise, like someone sighing. Then the door swings open, and Octavia glares into the room. “O?” he asks, confused. “Why didn’t you just come in?”

She gives an incredibly unsubtle nod to Clarke, widening her eyes at him dramatically.

“Ah,” he says, so she knows he gets the message. Across from him, Clarke stifles a laugh. “What’s up?”

“I’m going to Atom’s,” she says, like a challenge, pointing her nose in the air. “Her family’s having a party.”

Bellamy frowns a little. “Okay. Did you tell Indra?”

“Duh,” she rolls her eyes. “But it’s not like she _cares_.” And Bellamy can’t really argue with that, so he doesn’t bother trying. Her hair isn’t in any elaborate braids today, but it is in a bunch of tiny buns with those small colorful hair bands from the Dollar Tree. They look like a bunch of miniature bird nests, or maybe one of those Irish fields with all the rocks.

“Okay, well thanks for letting me know,” he says, and Octavia actually looks genuinely disappointed that he’s not trying to fight her on this. He’s not sure why she thought he would; he likes Atom, and O spends a lot of time at her house, both because she really likes Atom and her family, and because they have all the best snacks like pudding cups, and those cracker sticks that you dip into cheese. She and Atom have been best friends since like, second grade, when they got in a brawl over some toy lions, before realizing they could just team up and play with them together, instead.

He clears his throat a little. “And, uh, thanks for knocking—the _one time_ you do,” he mutters the last part under his breath, but Octavia just makes a face, grumbling _whatever_ , before marching back out.

“So we could have been having sex this whole time,” Clarke muses, and he chokes.

When he looks up at her, she’s grinning a little more smugly than he likes, so he stretches out a leg to nudge her with his foot. “When’s your fancy dinner thing?”

She catches his ankle, and grabs a pen off his nightstand, uncapping it with her teeth. “December 27th,” she says, except she’s speaking around the pen cap, so it sounds more like _Dedseder tonty-sedend_ , but he can guess the rest through context clues. She starts drawing something on the top of his foot, but he can’t see what it is, and it just feels like a bunch of triangles. Maybe it is a bunch of triangles; one never knows, with Clarke.

“I’ll have to make sure to rent the powder blue suit from _Napoleon Dynamite_ ,” he says, and she caps the pen, fanning the ink of her drawing to make it dry faster. When he pulls his foot back, he can see she’s drawn some sort of flower. Except it doesn’t look like any flower he’s ever seen before—it’s jagged, with thorns that look like fangs, and something dripping from the petals, and a pattern of triangles—he _knew_ it was triangles—turning the leaves all pointy and sharp. It’s badass, really, and he grabs his phone to take a shitty, grainy photo of it. Clarke looks pleased.

“That suit’s in like, every Disney Channel show ever, basically,” she says, letting him take her arm in his lap, the pen in his other hand.

“You know an awful lot about Disney Channel shows,” he says, suspicious, but she just hums. The chess game is off to the side, all but forgotten. He’s pretty sure she moved some of the pieces around while he wasn’t looking, because suddenly one of her pawns is at the end of the board, waiting to be queened.

“I can’t believe my girlfriend is a cheater,” he says in mock-despair, and Clarke snorts, careful to keep her arm steady as he draws on it. He’s turned it, so the pale skin of her inner forearm is facing the ceiling, but he doesn’t really know how to draw much of anything, so he’s just covering her in little ugly flowers, the kind four year olds draw, with dopey leaves and petals. He’s hoping they’re so ugly that they’re sort of cute, but. He’s not _that_ hopeful. He knows his own limits.

She takes a picture of her arm next to his foot when he’s finished, which only makes his flowers look even shittier, by comparison.

There’s a quiet moment where he’s pretty sure she’s just going to haul off and jump him, but instead Clarke just worries her lip, like she’s not sure she should say whatever it is she’s thinking.

“So,” she starts, slow. “Your mom…” she trails off, letting him fill in the blanks if he wants to. And he knows that if he asks, she’ll immediately back off.

But the thing is, he doesn’t really want her to. She’s told him about her dad, told him about a lot of things, and Bellamy’s never actually talked about his mom with anyone who didn’t already know about what happened, because he’s never really wanted to. Until now. Now, he really wants Clarke to know. He wants to tell her pretty much everything about him.

“She was driving home from a double shift at the hospital,” he says, and after repeating it to so many school counselors and court-appointed family therapists, it’s practically muscle memory by now, no matter how long it’s been. “It was raining, she was tired. She hadn’t slept in a couple days. She passed out at the wheel, and wrapped the car around a tree. Died instantly.”

Clarke reaches over to tangle their fingers together, pulling his hand into her lap, to rest on the warmth of her thigh. “I’m sorry,” she offers, and for once those words don’t sound forced, or empty, or arbitrary. And he knows it’s because she means them, and because she knows how it feels.

“It’s been a few years,” he shrugs, but he lets her tug him close anyway, lets her wrap herself around him, like she’s trying to cover him up, even though she’s so much smaller. “That’s why I never got my driver's license,” he admits.

He’s never said that out loud before, but he’s always known it was true, and he’d pretty much guessed the others could figure it out, if they tried hard enough. It's not even the driving aspect of it all; he's driven before, when he's had to. But be can't help tensing up at the thought of the test, of having flashbacks of his mom, and messing up, crashing the car into a stop sign or something.

Clarke pulls away with a jerk, staring up at him. “You don’t have a driver's license?”

Bellamy huffs a little, but she doesn’t seem judgmental or anything. Just legitimately shocked, like she cannot imagine not having a license, no matter the reason. “It’s a little hard, okay?”

“Okay,” she nods. “But you should probably still get one. If you’re up for it. I could, like, tutor you. Until you're comfortable enough to take the test,” she offers, and he eyes her, skeptical.

“On these winter roads? I don’t think so. Not the best idea.”

Clarke looks ready to fight him on it, but then deflates a little. “Okay,” she hedges, clearly annoyed with having to back down. “But only because I don’t have the best snow tires. At the first hint of spring, I’m taking you to a parking lot for parallel parking lessons.”

Bellamy raises a brow before he can help it, and he can feel the grin on his face growing stupider by the minute. “Planning on keeping me till the spring, Griffin?”

She flushes. “I thought that was the idea,” she defends. “Until Prom.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “And—after Prom?”

Clarke grins up at him, leaning in until the tip of her nose brushes his cheek. Her breath feels cool and perfect on his mouth. “Yeah,” she says, soft. “After Prom, too.”

Bellamy starts to close the distance, and he _knows_ they’re about to hardcore make out for like the next twenty minutes—maybe even more—but then his door’s shoved open so hard it slams against the wall. Raven stands in the doorway, looking the opposite of sorry.

“Oops,” she says, limping in and flopping down on the bed, scattering chess pieces, and completely ignoring the fact that Clarke is currently half in his lap, with one of his hands up her shirt, so her skin shows.

“Good morning, Raven,” he says, glaring. She pointedly ignores him, because she’s an ass.

“What’s so good about it?” she grumbles, and then glances at the doodles up and down Clarke’s arm, and the flower on his foot, and she rolls her eyes back to the ceiling. “Okay, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“Then why are you here?” Bellamy snaps. Clarke looks amused, and pats his shoulder, only a little patronizing.

Raven’s quiet for a moment and then, “Tsing called.”

Bellamy freezes and he feels Clarke go tense beside him. Her nails start to dig into his shoulder blade through his shirt, but he doesn’t even care. _Please don’t take her_ , he thinks—prays maybe, although he’s never really done that before. He’s not sure how it goes. _Please, please, please don’t take her away._

Clarke clears her throat, probably thinking the same thing. “And?”

“She wants me to go see my mom,” Raven says, and Bellamy lets out the breath he’d been holding in a hiss.

“Your…mom,” Clarke says, clearly confused. She’d probably thought Raven didn’t have a mom, since she never talks about her. She’d be mostly right; Raven’s been in foster care since she was eleven. She doesn’t have much in the way of moms to speak of, and what she does have is currently living in the Metro State Prison for Women, two hours away.

“My mom,” Raven confirms. She says the words like they leave a bad taste in her mouth. Like they’re made of vinegar, that she’s spitting out on the floor. Bellamy’s used to that voice, but Clarke isn’t, so he tries to explain.

“Raven’s mom is in jail,” he says. On the other end of the bed, Raven snorts.

“ _Prison_ ,” she corrects. “She’s in prison. Much worse than jail. More shanks, and soap dropping.” She huffs out a brittle laugh at her own joke.

Clarke makes a face, which seems fair. “Why do they want you to talk to her?”

Raven jostles her shoulders a little, like she’s trying to shrug. It doesn’t really make the mark, since she’s horizontal. “Why the fuck does the system want anyone to do anything? Because they can. I don’t fucking get it. The bitch doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I want _nothing_ from her.”

The three of them sit in silence for a minute, and Bellamy can tell Raven’s at war with her thoughts, so he just settles in against Clarke to wait, letting her rub her thumb over his knuckles. He’s not sure she even knows she’s doing it, and he doesn’t really want her to stop.

“Are you going to do it?” he asks, eventually, and Raven heaves a massive sigh too big for her body. She squints up at the ceiling, like it’s sending a message she can’t quite read.

“Yeah,” she says. Sighs, mostly. Tired, and resigned. “But I need a ride. Jaha has a family thing.”

“You asked _Wells_?” Bellamy asks, before he can stop himself. Raven turns her squint on him, narrowing her eyes even more, her signature _are you fucking kidding me right now?_ look.

“Yeah, and he’s busy,” she says, slow, stating each word clearly, like he’s an idiot.

She’s not _wrong_.

But he rolls his eyes anyway. “Did you ask Wick?”

The muscle in Raven’s jaw ticks a little. Clarke pinches him in the thigh so that he jumps. “No,” Raven says, even slower. He’s not sure how far he can push her before she snaps. Maybe he can get her to speak _so_ slowly that she sounds like a whale underwater. Maybe she’ll just kill him, instead.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m asking you instead,” she snaps. “And regretting every minute of it. Now are you gonna give me a ride, or not?”

“I just don’t know why you didn’t ask me first,” Bellamy grumbles.

Clarke flicks him in the side of the head. “Are you _actually_ hollow in there?” she asks, teasing, and he squeezes her sides until she squeaks and then glares at him.

Raven gives him a significant _look_. “Clearly you were busy,” she says, dry, snatching her cane up from the floor. “Now are we going, or what? Come on.”

Bellamy glances at Clarke with a raised brow. “Are you coming?”

“Of course I’m coming,” she says, giving him a look that says _don’t be a dumbass_. It might be warranted. “I’m the only one with a car.”

“What, did you think I came here for you?” Raven asks him, smirking. He glares at each of them in turn, as they high five.

“Weird, I know, to assume you showed up at _my_ house, in _my_ room, looking for _me_.”

“I was looking for _your_ girlfriend,” Raven rolls her eyes, clearly done with him, and this entire situation. ”Who was in _your_ lap. And now we’re taking _her_ car, so put some fucking shoes on.”

Clarke just grins, and leans up to kiss his jaw, sloppy and quick, before running out after Raven. “We’ll wait for you downstairs,” she says. “Hurry up, Bell.”

He watches her leave, and then grabs his jacket from where it landed on the floor the day before, and then tugs on his boots with no socks, because he’s in a hurry.

He skips down the stairs to the waiting BMW, idling away on the curb. When he slides into the front seat, he hears Joan Jett crooning on the radio, and turns to Clarke, surprised.

“This isn’t Christmas music,” he hedges, hurriedly locking his seatbelt in place so the stupid car will stop beeping.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Raven grouses from the backseat. He ignores her, because the only other option is turning around and hurling insults at each other for the whole two hour drive, and he’s actually positive Clarke would just pull over and leave them on the side of the road.

“I thought we needed a change of pace,” Clarke says, and she’s looking dangerous again, like she’s ready to do some damage.

Bellamy leans over to crank the volume dial all the way up, and she grins at him, before pulling out into traffic. He lets the electric guitar wash over him, as their town blurs behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Also here's a playlist for this story, if that's the sort of thing you're into:
> 
> http://8tracks.com/tierannasaurusrex/where-they-think-they-belong-1


End file.
